Three extraordinary women with unique histories are leading the charge to change inequities at the Bar. They speak to Claire Chaffey

Jessie Taylor's light bulb moment came about 10 years ago when she accompanied a friend to an immigration detention centre in Victoria.

She hadn't wanted to go, but was talked into it. What she experienced changed her life.

"I was knocked off my feet by what I saw and what I started to learn about what asylum seekers are subjected to at the hands of our governments," she says. "I found it quite upsetting, and something I wanted to respond to. It galvanised me through studying law and gave me a reason to study law."

Taylor is now a barrister - having joined the Victorian Bar in November along with 32 other new starters - and looks back on that moment as one which led her to where she is today.

At the age of 29, Taylor has amassed some incredible achievements and life experiences. For one, she is the foster mother to a 16-year-old Afghan refugee whom she met in an Indonesian detention centre, and is responsible for a documentary exposing the realities of what goes on in such detention centres.

Titled Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, the documentary was produced by Taylor and filmmaker friends David Schmidt and Chris Kamen, and tells the stories of asylum seekers in 11 detention centres throughout Indonesia.

The result is an incredibly moving film which exposed a previously hidden side of the asylum seeker debate, and Taylor is now recognised as an authority on asylum seeker and refugee issues.

"We went to Indonesia with a view to writing a report on the conditions inside immigration detention. That was my initial intention," she says. "Then I rang my friend David Schmidt, who is a wonderful filmmaker, and he was available ... We met 250 people in 11 different places of detention all across Indonesia ... I was wearing a hidden camera in some of the more closed detention centres when it was clear we weren't going to be allowed access with a camera."

After returning from Indonesia in 2009, Taylor landed a job as associate to Justice Bromberg of the Federal Court. On the same day, she put her name down to go to the Bar. "I always had the inclination that I was not cut out to be a solicitor," she says.

After finishing up as an associate, Taylor was "out of action" for a while following major surgery, but soon found herself as a duty lawyer at Victoria Legal Aid. "It was insane, but I loved it," she says. "It confirmed that I wanted to go to the Bar."

And this is exactly what she did, along with fellow new starter Fiona Todd, whom Taylor admires greatly, largely because of the fact that Todd had a four-month-old baby when she sat the reader's exams.

"She was going down to the parent's room to express milk every few hours during the reader's course," says Taylor. "She's just amazing."

Todd, though, doesn't necessarily see it like that, and says the Bar allows her the freedom to juggle satisfying, intellectual work with motherhood.

"As a solicitor, I was expected to be available all the time ... So far, [the Bar] is working for me," she says. Quite frankly, Todd loves being a barrister and says it is strangely comfortable territory for her after having spent a decade gracing our theatres and television screens as a professional actor.

"I played lots of lawyers before I pretended to be one in real life," she laughs. "

While she relished being an actor, Todd says there came a time when she knew it would not be enough to sustain her, and she thus decided to study law, squeezing in exams between jaunts around the country with various theatre productions. Then, after a stint as an associate in the Supreme Court for Justice Morris, followed by several years with Rob Stary's firm in Melbourne, Todd made to move towards the Bar - and she is making the most of every moment.

"I have been very lucky so far to have had some very big, very interesting matters handed to me. It is a matter of time management, pure and simple - allocating the right amount of preparation time to each case and not going silly and doing too much," she says. "I feel lucky and I think, 'Enjoy it!', because in two or three weeks, I might not be this busy."

Another new starter enjoying being busy at the Bar is Abigail Burchill.

Like Taylor and Todd, Burchill is flying the flag for women in the profession, but she is also representing another minority whose numbers are very few at the Bar.

She is the great, great, great granddaughter of Thomas James and Ada Cooper; the latter an Indigenous woman whose brother was prominent Indigenous rights activist William Cooper. James, who was a teacher, educated William Cooper, who went on to be instrumental in bringing about the historic 1967 referendum.

For Burchill, who now has three small children of her own, her family has been her biggest inspiration.

"There was always this very strong historical leaning, which everybody in the family took up, to really work hard towards Aboriginal rights, and also achieve academically and professionally," she says. "I was always interested in doing law, because I wanted to work in something that had social justice as a component. I was really affected by the rights of Aboriginal people in Shepparton (Victoria) and, later on, looking into the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody while I was doing my law degree.

While Burchill is representative of two minorities at the Bar, she has never seen herself as any different to those who make up the majority.

"I just want to make the most of the opportunities that I have to represent my gender and culture in positive ways, so that I am regarded as an equal," she says. "Hopefully, I'll be an example for more people to come [to the Bar]. At the same time, I think there are imbalances ... and it is important that is addressed."

Like Taylor and Todd, Burchill now forms a part of a new era of practitioners striving to undo the inequities of the past - and this is something of which she is immensely proud.

"My entry into the legal sector, as a woman, is very much as a result of the brave and inspiring women who have paved my way," she says. "I acknowledge it and stand in awe of their achievement."