A Magistrate's View - March 2024

Alison Edelshain will talk about her work as a magistrate and we can participate in a mock trial.

I joined the magistracy in 2013, so has just passed her 10-year anniversary.  That is quite a short time compared to many others who have been sitting on the Bench for 30 and 40 years.  I sit on the North-West London Bench and we sit at Willesden Magistrates' Court.  We hear cases from the Barnet, Brent and Harrow areas.  I sit in both the Adult and Youth Criminal courts.  

Before becoming a magistrate, I sat on a Judicial Advisory Committee for 10 years where I was the lay person (non-magistrate) sitting alongside two magistrates in selecting new magistrates and also dealing with disciplinary cases of sitting magistrates.  

Alongside my role as a magistrate, I am also part of a team which visits local schools running crime prevention programmes for children in Years 7 and 8.  Outside of the Court system, following a first degree in History and a later MBA from London Business School, I have spent most of my career in Human Resources ending up as Director of Recruitment and International HR for a major Financial Services company.  More recently I now divide up my time between being on two Boards (one as Deputy Chair) where I am most deeply involved with the HR issues, my magistracy work and being a hands-on grandmother (the last being by far the most physically demanding...!).