Meet Julienne: An aspiring barrister’s journey from Fort St. John to U.K. law school graduation

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — At just 11 years old, Julienne Chipesia added “become a lawyer” to a movie-inspired bucket list – and never looked back.

While following that plan hasn’t been easy, more than a decade later, Chipesia is doing exactly what she set out to.

Chipesia, born in Fort St. John, moved to Inuvik at the age of six. While she completed most of her education in the north, she attended a private high school in Duncan on Vancouver Island before flying abroad to study law.

First, she moved to Bristol in the U.K. to pursue an undergraduate degree. Last month, Chipesia graduated with a master’s degree from The University of Law in Manchester, U.K. Her field includes company law, corporate governance and data protection.

“My graduation was very significant. It was a big accomplishment in my academic career. It was my first master’s and I am proud of that,” she said.

As a child, Chipesia said she would often attend meetings with her mother, Wanda McDonald. Those experiences inspired her to take on leadership roles and develop a passion for public speaking.

To work as a lawyer in the U.K., you have choices: either become a barrister to represent clients through courtroom advocacy or act as a solicitor handling legal work outside court.

Chipesia said she always envisioned herself as a barrister and began her bar training course in October – around the same time she finished her dissertation for her master’s. 

That course includes courtroom simulations known as “moots,” where students argue mock cases before judges.

“That’s something that I quite enjoy about practising law,” she said, “because a lot of the finals, you get to be in front of actual court judges and actually in the courtrooms.

“One of the things you learn when you’re in law school is, it’s kind-of like a puzzle. You get presented a situation and you have to try and solve that situation, but solve it using references. So it was more towards my field that I wanted to be in. It was more trying to solve that problem. That’s what I enjoyed about it.”

Once Chipesia completes the course, she will be called to the bar as an unregistered barrister, then seek a one-year pupillage with a practising barrister. That would be the final step before she could work independently.

She hopes to stay in the U.K. for that training but plans to return home in the future to work in corporate and commercial law. Her long-term goal is to become a judge, and she has even considered looking at positions with United Nations judges.

To those interested in becoming a lawyer, Chipesia’s advice is to stick with it, even when it gets difficult.

“There’s going to be a lot of long nights but at the end of it, it’s going to be all worth it, because even when you are working through the long nights, eventually it’s going to start to click, and it’s going to be easier to connect all the dots together,” she said.

“If you enjoy understanding it in that way, I think there’s going to be more people that will not see law as such a scary thing, but more that it’s a practical procedure you have to follow.”