A new blog, launched by Kent Law School alumna Rachel Bale offers a uniquely female perspective on issues arising in housing, property and land law.
Rachel graduated from Kent in 2017 with a 1st Class Honours LLB in English and French Law. She is now a Legal Support Officer at Matrix Chambers and is due to begin a Property and Commercial pupillage at 3PB in October 2021.
In her blog, named Lady of the Land, Rachel aims to simplify key concepts of land law, within the context of real-life examples, and to explore the impact of property stories and cases on women and marginalised groups. It’s also an opportunity for Rachel to reflect on how the legal frameworks of property and land law might be improved.
Rachel said: ‘Too often, I find the stories passed down through the legacy of land law rarely, if ever, reflect me. Not as a woman and not as a person of colour. I created this blog as a breathing space in order to discuss land issues and how they can at times affect women and other marginalised groups, disproportionately. It also aims to explain concepts of property law in a simpler way removing some of the mystique that many law students find difficult to penetrate.
‘Throughout my legal academia I have had a keen interest in property law enjoying the technical intricacies of the legal principles and approaching case law much like a puzzle that needed to be solved. However, simultaneously, I also found the subject to be unnecessarily aloof and complicated, presented as dry and exclusive to a particular class of people. This has always seemed strange to me, as fundamentally rules governing property is reliant on relationships, be it one harassing neighbour to another, landlord to tenant or the mystical concept of equity to the concept of formalism. It all interlinks.’
During her time at Kent, Rachel was a Student Mentor, Student Ambassador for the Law School and represented the University in both national and international Mediation competitions. She was also President of the Erasmus Society and an active participant in the Law School’s mooting programme – securing a place in the finals of the Southern Varsity Mooting Competition in 2017.
In her final year of studies, Rachel was awarded one of the highest scholarships available from Inner Temple to fund her Bar Professional Training Course. She already had plans then to specialise in property law, citing the case of Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17 as a particular case that helped fuel her passion for this area of law. (Stack v Dowden is a leading English property law case concerning the division of interests in family property after the breakdown of a cohabitation relationship.)
Rachel says she welcomes suggestions for posts for her new blog and encourages anyone interested to contact her via the blog’s contact page.