W&N pre-empts ‘searing indictment’ of legal system stacked against women 

Award-winning barrister Charlotte Proudman’s He Said, She Said: The Struggle for Justice in an Unjust System has been pre-empted by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

Jenny Lord, executive publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Adam Gauntlett at PFD, for publication in hardback, audio and e-book in spring 2025.

The synopsis reads: “In the family court, traumatised women seek safety and justice, often to find only disdain and cruel insensitivity. Survivors of sexual, physical and emotional violence are called liars because they lack evidence for their claims, and deemed unreliable witnesses compared to the men who abused them. 

“They are forced to recall the worst moments of their lives in excruciating detail, sometimes face to face with their violent ex, and always confronted with a lawyer who will do anything to destroy their story.

“Barrister Charlotte Proudman has represented countless women in cases spanning rape, domestic abuse, child abduction, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. She has seen first-hand how the family court deepens the trauma of vulnerable women, staking their futures on the biases of individual judges and forcing them to endure the torture of a judicial process that stretches over months and sometimes years.

“Drawing on shocking real-life cases, Proudman lays bare the extent of misogyny and victim-blaming that infects our justice system: the court’s impulse to believe a man at all costs and to discredit a woman for any reason.”

Proudman won Rising Star by the Women in Law Awards 2020, she was named Hot 100 by the Lawyer in 2021, was highly commended for Junior Family Law Barrister of the Year and a case of hers won Case of the Year at the Family Law Awards 2021.

She combines her legal career with academic work, as a research associate at the University of Cambridge, where she researches and teaches gender inequality under law in the UK. This year, she founded Right to Equality, a radical organisation campaigning to change the law for women and girls.

Proudman said of her book: “[It] is for every woman and girl who has been silenced, ignored and failed by the justice system. For too long, the inside workings of the family courts have been secret – preventing public scrutiny of gender discrimination in the law.

“After years of representing vulnerable victims and survivors, I share women’s stories of the grave injustices that they have suffered and been preventing from speaking about. Breaking the silence is the start of a real transformation of the legal establishment where the balance of power is held by largely white, powerful men to the exclusion of marginalised women.”

Lord added: “A truly tenacious and inspiring advocate for women’s rights, Charlotte’s proposal was one of the most arresting we’ve read at W&N. Combining real-life stories with impeccable research and first-hand experience, He Said, She Said is sure to build on an urgent conversation about just how broken and biased the legal system is and the work required to remake it.”