Preparation for court means different things to different barristers. For Emily Windsor, it means covering the full range of things that can determine whether a hearing goes well — from legal mastery to technical readiness — and holding yourself to that standard without anyone else in the room to check your work.

Windsor’s chancery practice has been built over decades, and her thinking about preparation reflects that accumulated experience. The starting point is always the material. Every document needs to be read. The facts need to be held in memory, not retrieved under pressure. The applicable cases and statutory provisions need to be understood well enough to explain clearly to a judge and to engage with under questioning — not merely cited but genuinely understood.

Deepening that understanding is something Windsor pursues outside the pressures of active practice. She has contributed to practitioner texts in her area of law, typically setting aside two to three weeks for this purpose each year, often during summer holidays. The intellectual exercise is distinct from casework. When writing for other practitioners who will rely on what you produce, accuracy and structural clarity matter at a level that case preparation alone does not require. The process builds knowledge that informs her court work in ways she regards as genuinely valuable.

Preparation for Windsor also involves looking critically at her own position. Before any hearing, she works through the weaknesses in her case, the arguments opposing counsel is likely to advance, and the questions a judge might raise. An advocate who has worked through those scenarios privately is not encountering them for the first time when they surface in a hearing. The ability to react swiftly to unexpected developments in court, she notes, begins with thorough preparation and the mental rehearsal of various scenarios — not with natural quickness alone.

Her interest in argument and debate goes back to her teenage years, when she was drawn to marshalling points, contesting opposing views, and thinking quickly. English and history fed the same analytical instinct. Those early habits found a natural home at the Bar, where the requirements are not fundamentally different — only higher-stakes and more formally structured.

Part of what those stakes now involve is technical competence. Remote hearings have become a routine part of practice — for short matters, case management, and proceedings without witness evidence — and Windsor approaches the technical side of those appearances with the same rigour she applies to legal preparation. She is specific about the hierarchy of concerns: audio quality matters more than video. A judge can tolerate a visual glitch; they cannot follow submissions they cannot hear. Checking connectivity, managing documents efficiently, and eliminating avoidable technical failures are all part of being professionally ready.

The evolution in written advocacy has been equally significant. Windsor began her career at a time when oral performance was the primary measure of a barrister’s effectiveness. That has shifted substantially. Written submissions now carry weight equal to oral argument in many proceedings, and the outcome of a case is often shaped — sometimes settled — by what was filed before anyone appeared to speak.

What Windsor’s approach amounts to is a consistent philosophy: every dimension of a hearing deserves preparation, and the advocate who has covered those dimensions honestly is in a far stronger position than one who has not.