STEPHEN SMITH: And now we come to our honorary award. These are awarded by the University in recognition of somebody who has made a very significant contribution in their particular field, and I now have great pleasure in inviting Professor Keith McLay to give the commendation for the conferment of the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University to Her Honour Judge Nirmal Shant QC.
PROFESSOR KEITH MCLAY: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, Deputy Lieutenant, honoured guest, Mayor of Derby, graduands of 2022 and all our guests here today. It gives me great pleasure to be presenting Her Honour Judge Nirmal Shant QC for the award of Honorary Doctor of the University. Nirmal is a Resident Judge at Derby Crown Court and the first female Honorary Recorder of Derby. She conducts the most serious criminal cases in Derbyshire. She also sits in the Court of Appeal in London dealing with appeals from the Crown Court and is an Honorary Bencher of Gray's Inn.
Nirmal was fascinated by the law from a very early age. Growing up in the market town of Long Eaton in the 1970s, she hoped that one day she might become a criminal barrister and used to rush home from school at lunch break to catch a glimpse of her favourite courtroom television drama, ‘Crown Court’.
Despite the advice from school to consider working in retail, Nirmal went on to study Law at the University of Leicester and was called to the Bar in 1984. Over the next two decades she prosecuted and defended cases in the Crown courts of London, the Midlands and beyond. In 2001 she was appointed as a Recorder, which is a part-time judge, and in 2006 she was appointed a Queen's Counsel, one of the first black and minority ethnic barristers in the East Midlands to hold such a rank. As Queen's Counsel she was counsel of choice for both prosecution and defence nationwide in many heavily publicised and high-profile trials.
In 2015 Nirmal was made a judge by the Judicial Appointments Commission, and with it received a brief to serve at Derby Crown court. A year later, she was promoted to the post of Resident Judge of Derby Crown Court.
Nirmal is an advocate for diversity in the legal profession. In 2004 she helped to set up the Midland Asian Lawyers Association, an organisation helping to provide networking opportunities for those under-represented in the legal profession. She also acts as a circuit diversity mentor and is a mentor for junior members of Gray's Inn. She has been a strong supporter of our Derby Law School and acts as a legal mentor to many of our students.
Nirmal is married with two daughters and is joined today by Narinder, Anjini, and Shivani.
Chancellor, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to promoting justice within Derby and Derbyshire, and her support for Derby Law School, we are delighted to award Her Honour Judge Nirmal Shant QC the honorary degree of Doctor of the University.
HER HONOUR JUDGE NIRMAL SHANT: I think I can safely bet that none of you have ever heard of the programme called ‘Crown Court’ because it was back in the 1970s. My connection with the University has been through mentoring students such as yourselves. And I have to say that I have actually learned more from them, than I have taught them, because some of them have come from challenging backgrounds and faced difficulties during their course. But they have carried on and I have seen some of them go from being hesitant law students to successful lawyers. So, it has been my very great pleasure to have that association with this University.
My own journey began as long ago as 1984. The legal world then was very different. I didn't fit into the stereotype of a barrister, and I have a shoebox of rejections to prove it. But the reason I tell you that, is that I wasn't prepared to give up, I wasn't prepared to accept no, and I carried on. And indeed, what I'd say to you, if you have a dream, don't give up on it. Don't let people tell you that you can't do it. I did get a place in Chambers, and I was often the only woman in a criminal courtroom. But I loved the job, I still love the job. And it had its wonderful moments, some of them challenging, some of them interesting.
It was my task, when representing a young man who was charged with possession of crack cocaine, to put his defence. He had dropped the drugs as the police chased him through his garden. His defence was that his 86-year-old neighbour had planted the crack cocaine in his garden. And it was my job to put that to her, so you can imagine I wasn't looking forward to that task. I thought I might get something of a pasting from her when I put it to her. In she came, and I steeled myself to put the defendant's case to her. And I said 'Madam, you may be 86, you may look very frail, but the fact is you planted these drugs in the defendant's garden, didn't you?'. There was a pause, and then she looked at me pityingly and she said 'Never mind, dear. You'll get a better job'.
The fact is I love the job and it's provided me with challenges and an interesting road. As time went on, the legal world has changed, I became a Queen's Counsel, if you don't know what that means, it means a senior member of the profession prosecuting and defending in the most serious cases, and as part of my task I prosecuted, as you've heard, and defended in scores of murder cases. Some were more memorable than others.
One defendant I prosecuted, who had killed his wife, helpfully googled, after killing his wife, 'how to kill your wife'. And that understandably provided the police with the trail to convicting him. There was also a case that I prosecuted of an airline pilot who's alleged to have killed his wife. So fascinating was the case, that members of the public rang in with their suggestions of why he'd done it and how he'd done it. And I've been privileged to just take part in that career, and I have been privileged to enjoy it.
It's always been important to me, that the law to have any respect from members of the public, has to be reflected in its numbers, the society it serves. So, it's been very close to my heart to ensure that the judiciary and the legal profession reflect all the members of our society. In 2015 I was appointed a judge at Derby Crown Court and the year after as the Resident Judge. What does that mean? Well, it means when things go well, it's all okay. And things go badly, it's my fault. But I enjoy it. I've got an excellent team of judges and staff and they work hard.
And I've had my share of difficult cases. I've done gangland killings, I have dealt with gentle people who've killed in difficult circumstances. And some of the hardest moments have come in court, for example passing a life sentence on a young man of 20. But I can say that throughout that, I've had to retain a sense of humour and I would not have got through it without the support of my husband and my two children.
We've worked hard over the last two years with Covid. We've had to cope with remote hearings, in fact you may not know this, but we were one of the first countries to get the judges back in court dealing with cases. You probably know Zoom, we have something which is the equivalent called CVP and it's generated its funny moments, because defendants can stay at home and link up with the court. And sometimes, certainly in the early days, the technology didn't work well. And I remember the camera would often not be at the right angle. I was dealing with a case and the camera appeared not to be at the right angle, so I was pressing the screen to see if I could move it around, only to discover the reason why the defendant looked as if he was horizontal was because he was, he was lying in bed.
Another occasion recently where a young man decided he was going to link up to the court in his car, because he had no quiet privacy in his home. But having sat in the driver's seat, linked up to court, decided to give his dashboard a good dusting because it looked really dusty. So, it's hard to get the majesty of the court across by CVP, but we've survived it.
And I've survived my career, I've enjoyed it and it's been an interesting journey. But today is not about me, today is about you. You faced a difficult time over the last two years. Being a student learning remotely cannot have been easy, but already by coming through it, you have shown resilience. You will need that resilience. The road is never straight, but if you commit to what you want and if you dare to dream it, and you're prepared to put in the hard work, which you've already demonstrated that you are, you will have success. I wish you the very best and hope that each and every one of you has the very best success. Thank you very much!