Gabrielle Turnquest - world's youngest person to pass the Bar

Gabrielle Turnquest is the youngest person in the world to pass the UK Bar exams. At the tender age of 18, when most undergraduates are just beginning their degrees, this remarkable young woman is the youngest qualified barrister in Wales and England. The average age of lawyers who take the Bar is 27.

Because of this, she says, people have assumed that she is somehow extraordinary, a prodigy of sorts. She doesn’t see it that way:

I just had opportunities and programmes available to me that I was able to take advantage of.”

Based in Florida, she began her undergraduate degree at 14, finished it at 16 where she moved to the U.K. and completed a graduate law degree at the University of Law and passed the UK bar exams at 18.

Gabrielle is very humble about her accomplishments and said:

I am honored to be the youngest person to pass the Bar exams but, really, I was not aware at the time what the average age was. I didn’t fully realise the impact of it.”

This young woman is no stranger to breaking records. At the age of 16 she had made history being the youngest person to get an undergraduate degree in psychology which she got at Liberty University which is in Virginia. Psychology was Turnquest’s other passion, but she had reservations about how many people would feel comfortable seeing a teenage psychologist.

Law as a profession has often been criticized for its lack of diversity but Turnquest has thankfully reported a different view, which suggests that law is evolving and growing less exclusionary as time has moved on:

I have never felt out of place. The UK’s University of Law was fairly international in nature. It was diverse and I think it added to my studies to gain different perspectives."

Is there anything that Turnquest would recommend for people that would like to follow in her footsteps?

I would tell people to figure out what field it is that you’re trying to get in and work towards that. Not everyone needs to specialise, but you can focus more in choosing the things that you do. Be able to just tailor what it is you want to do with the rest of your studies. If I hadn’t gone in knowing vaguely what area of the law I wanted to go into I wouldn’t have been as strategic.”

Francine Fernandes