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Abby Rolling is a practising criminal defence solicitor, writer and comedian. Her comedy draws on her nearly 30 years in the legal field, largely spent as a Legal Aid solicitor in Magistrates’ courts.

In August 2022, Abby made her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut, performing her sell-out hour-long stand-up comedy and storytelling show Shit Lawyer.

Refreshingly irreverent and uncompromising, Abby lifts the lid on our criminal justice system in terminal decline.

Abby was recently selected by screenwriter Chris Lang to develop a new legal drama as part of the ScreenSkills and Dancing Ledge Productions TV Mentoring Scheme, now with World Productions, West End, London.

Abby is a stand-up performer, public speaker and writer of real wit and originality, tackling some difficult material with her laser insight and bleak northern humour.  Once described, ‘like the Secret Barrister, but with gags and a face’, Abby skillfully draws out the comi-tragic realities of her job.

For the third consecutive year, Abby Rolling returned to the Edinburgh Festival in 2024, selling out every gig yet again!

Abby Rolling grew up in Sheffield and now resides in Barnsley. She has practised criminal defence legal aid law for almost all of her career in Yorkshire. She first qualified in 1995 and obtained her Higher Rights in 2000. She is currently working as a freelance Criminal Defence Lawyer while developing her comedy and writing.

Abby has spoken about the tragic demise of a justice system once revered as the best in the world. With decades of underfunding and neglect, justice is being diluted, and poor standards are being normalised. She notes how dilapidated courts are falling apart, and inefficiency has become endemic. Prisons are bulging, courts are closing, and trials can take years to be heard. So Shit Lawyer is a clarion call, a manifesto for change.

The hour-long show lifts the lid on the British criminal justice system as it really is. It’s written for an audience not normally concerned with legal matters, who may not readily appreciate that a healthy, well-functioning criminal justice system is an insurance policy for everybody.

Comedic lawyer Abby Rolling unpicks some deeply entrenched myths, such as the ‘fat cat’ lawyer, and delves into the impact of things not being properly funded.

She exposes how governments of all hues indulge in the politics of penal populism, legislating to appear tough on crime and the causes of crime, at the expense of actually making us safer.

While none of that sounds obviously funny, Abby balances it to give enough detail to make the impact, without it becoming a Ted Talk, juxtaposing the darker factual stuff with tales of outrageous (true) escapades of a couple of fictional ‘clients’, through which the audience becomes emotionally invested.

After the sell-out success at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe, Abby continues to tour the show, attending her third successive Edinburgh Fringe and selling out in 2024.

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