Jennifer Robinson’s prestigious career almost ended before it began

Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson was in her twenties when she was thrust into the spotlight in the wake of one of the biggest news stories in the world.

It was late 2010 and Robinson, just 28 and a year out of Oxford, stepped in to represent WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

“I was suddenly thrust onto the global stage,” Robinson told Helen McCabe as part of FW’s Too Much podcast.  

“I was doing media interviews on one of the most controversial and difficult cases in the world, and a lot of people were surprised to see me there.”

Her involvement in Assange’s case began in September 2010 after a curious phone call from her mentor, Australian-British barrister Geoffrey Robertson KC.

Sal please add in caption here from long caption in Asana. Image credit: Getty Images

“He said ‘Jen you need to come around for lunch today’. But he was being really cryptic on the phone and I thought, ‘Are Geoffrey and Kathy like trying to set me up with someone’,” she said.

“And anyway, he said, ‘No, that’s a client you need to come meet a potential client’. And I turned up a couple of days later, and it was Julian Assange.”

Wikileaks were about to publish the Iraq War logs and throughout the publication of the US diplomatic cables. Robinson acted as the Australian activist’s legal adviser.

“I’ve worked on the Swedish extradition case, and ever since on his asylum claim on, you know, applications to the UN, to the Inter American court of human rights, the European Court of Human Rights up and down the British courts,” she said. 

“It’s been a very long time.” 

 She said in the early days, people would “presume I was a secretary, not a lawyer”.

Robinson has represented Assange now for more than a decade. She is the longest serving lawyer on the team.

“I’ve been through so much with Julian as a client, worked with so many amazing lawyers around the world,” she said. 

I was just treated with such disrespect, and so dismissed, like a ‘Go away, little girl. You’re too young to be here’.

“I’m so grateful for the start that Geoffrey gave me and for encouraging me in that way, as a young lawyer.”

Assange’s case isn’t the only one where Robinson was made to feel like she was “too young”. It was a major case involving the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

“While I was down in Mauritius and doing this other work for Geoffrey Robertson and the government, I was asked to consider the question of the Chagos Islands, which was some territories which were unlawfully exercised by the Brits when Mauritius got independence,” Robinson said. 

In short, there was an international law question and dispute between the British government and the Russian government over these islands. 

Robinson was asked to meet the government’s lead counsel, Professor Brownlee, a brilliant legal mind, who wrote the textbook on international law she once studied.

As it turns out, Robinson and Brownlee were staying at the same hotel.

They first met coincidentally in the hotel lobby, while Robinson was walking back from a day off at the beach in a bikini.

“Any young woman who is hoping to be taken seriously being met in a bikini is not really how you want to start off,” she said.

The next morning, as they sat down to discuss the case Robinson was greeted with a frosty reception from Brownlee. 

“I tried to start to discuss it with him and he’s like, ‘Does your supervisor know that you’re here?’ And it was basically the equivalent saying, ‘Does your mum and dad know that you’re here?’ And he was completely dismissive,” she said.

“I remember walking away from the meeting, I was so demoralised, and I called some girlfriends, my friends are up at Oxford and I was telling them about what happened. I said, ‘If this is international law, I don’t want to be a part of it’. I was just treated with such disrespect, and so dismissed, like a ‘Go away, little girl. You’re too young to be here’.”

Ten years later, Robinson experienced a full circle moment when Mauritius took the case to the International Court of Justice.

“I stood up before the court and made the arguments that I had wanted to discuss with Professor Brownlee, which were accepted by the court,” she said.

Afterwards, the Prime Minister of Mauritius stood up to thank and congratulate her and the same Solicitor General who she saw 10 years earlier was thrilled to see her on the case.

“I’ll never forget, the Prime Minister’s mother was there… And she came up to me and she said, ‘I’m so proud of you, to be up there as a young woman doing that’ and I actually got quite emotional,” she said. 

“I had to go and sort of pull myself together… being validated like that.” 

Listen to Too Much wherever you get your podcasts.