Kilkenny Castle
Credit: Jonjobaker [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Programmed by Naoise Nunn, co-founder and former co-director of Kilkenomics, the festival that turned economics from a subject people avoided into a weekend people queue for. The Kilkenny Law Festival sets out to do the same for the law. It puts barristers, judges, journalists, forensic experts, novelists, podcasters and a court artist on stages in pubs, hotels, theatres and a working courtroom, and asks them to explain how the system actually works, where it breaks, and who pays when it does.

“Everybody has an opinion on economics but almost nobody understands it. That was the gap Kilkenomics filled,” said Ms Nunn. “The law is worse. It decides who goes to prison, who gets deported, who keeps their house, whether the story about the politician gets printed. It shapes your life whether or not it works for you. And yet most people only meet it in a crisis, through a solicitor’s letter or a court summons or a headline. We want to open the courtroom doors for a weekend and let everyone in.”

The programme is deliberately built for three audiences at once with speakers that appeal to legal professionals, law students and the public.

Ms Nunn said: “This is not a legal conference and it’s not a trade fair. It’s a festival about justice, power and what happens to ordinary people when the two collide - all of it is in plain English.”

The festival runs from Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September and further information can be found here.