Much prosecuting in the magistrates’ court takes the form of someone getting to their feet and presenting a case they have never set eyes on before'. The almost insuperable difficulties of ensuring that defendants are defended properly and prosecuted fairly are laid out: 'The magistrates' court is the accident and emergency department of criminal justice: any moment a problem will walk through the door and the prosecutor will have to deal with it blind. And every day it is met by a wall of silence'. The author argues that the public should be outraged by the chronic underfunding of the criminal justice system: 'In every crumbling, decaying magistrates’ court and leaking Crown Court in the land, we see every day the law's equivalent of untreated, neglected patients on hospital trolleys. It mixes first-hand accounts of the author as advocate, acting at different times for the prosecution and the defence, with a discussion of how the system in practice fails to deliver justice on a daily basis: 'Access to justice, the rule of law, fairness to defendants, justice for victims – those fine emblems which we purport to hold so dear – are each day incarnated in effigy, rolled out in the Crown and magistrates' courts and ritually torched'. The book is loosely structured to follow the life of a criminal case from magistrates' court, through to sentence and appeal. As of the book's publication date in March 2018 the author had a following on Twitter of nearly 88,000. 'The Secret Barrister' is also a blogger who in 20 was named Independent Blogger of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. The book's dustjacket states that the author, 'The Secret Barrister', is a junior barrister practising criminal law before the courts of England and Wales.

The subtitle is a play on words: the book is not about criminal lawbreaking, but about how the legal system is failing in its purpose. It is a critical first-hand account of the state of the criminal justice system in England and Wales.

The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken is a 2018 book by an anonymous author with the pen name ' The Secret Barrister'.

The secret barrister books in order