Pupillage FAQ

You will follow your pupil supervisor, attending court almost every day. You look at your supervisor’s cases, you may be asked to prepare case summaries, to help with advices and legal research. You may be asked to do similar exercises for other members, with your supervisor’s approval. Towards the end of those six months, you will start to go to the magistrates’ court with more junior members of Chambers to see the sort of work you will be doing when you are on your feet.

Since the pandemic, more pre-trial hearings are conducted remotely. Practitioners have got used to advocacy on screen. Pupils will attend with their supervisor on video hearings. The opportunity to go into Chambers and meet other members in person has lessened to a degree. However, Chambers has recently moved into an attractive new home in the Temple, so we hope the physical premises will continue to feature in the life of pupils.

Most of the second six is spent in the magistrates’ courts. It is a very steep learning curve. The diary is often finalised at short notice. You often don’t know where you will be the next day until the end of the day. There can be quite a lot of travel. Every case is different and every single day you will be learning something new. There is a rota for covering Saturday remand courts for regular Chambers solicitors. You learn to digest things quickly and it gets easier over time. Junior tenants are a particularly helpful resource at this stage and are always at the end of the phone ready to help.

The most competitive time is securing pupillage. Once you have pupillage you are not really in competition with other pupils: you help each other, and will find the profession to be close knit and supportive.

Whatever your long term ambitions, Chambers takes the view that a grounding in general crime, seeing a variety of court work on a regular basis is the most helpful way to develop your skills and practice during pupillage. Your exposure will depend to a degree on the practice of your supervisor. However, white collar or heavyweight fraud practice seldom starts at the outset of your practice.

Regular in house advocacy training takes place with members of the pupillage committee. Since the pandemic, these have been held by Zoom. We have all had to get used to remote advocacy, but hope that some sessions may return to face-to-face in the future. These sessions are friendly and supportive and designed to equip you with useful skills for the stage you have reached. You are given constructive feedback after each session, which is also passed on to your supervisor. Pupils receive regular ongoing training from their supervisor, with reference to the BSB Professional Statement competencies. During the practising period, pupils find support from junior tenants is readily available and invaluable. Chambers also funds external training courses and encourages pupils to take advantage of training offered by the Inns of Court, the Advocate’s Gateway, the CBA and South Eastern Circuit.

Public funding struggles are not unique to the Bar, but proper funding of the criminal justice system does not seem to be a vote winner. Quite apart from the impact on the morale of the profession, the current delays and disruption currently being experienced by witnesses, defendants and other court users are appalling.

However, this is still a wonderful profession. Even those who have been practising for many years still experience a thrill and a nervousness going to court. Feeling satisfied with a good speech or cross-examination or having secured a really good outcome for your lay or professional client, keeps us going through challenging times. It is heartening to see talented and bright applicants continuing to apply.

We know it can be dispiriting to hear well-meaning but relentless warnings discouraging you from joining the Criminal Bar. Perseverance is important. Being knocked back and re-applying is not a wasted effort: it demonstrates your dedication, commitment and hard work, as will be required in practice.

Academic achievement is welcome but is to an extent, a given. It may factor in the assessment to a lesser degree than demonstrating “people skills” which are important for the Criminal Bar. Wider experience than solely academic will catch our eye.

The Criminal Bar is not only for a certain type of person from a certain type of background. We need energetic, passionate, people to ensure that the independent Bar survives and thrives in challenging times.

Take care filling out the application form itself. Try to avoid contraction. Take time to correct spelling and other mistakes. Also, take a step back – perhaps ask someone to read it for you – and ask if it is ‘internally consistent’; for example, if you have said that you are passionate about the Criminal Bar but all of your experience and interests appear to lie elsewhere that is what the reader of your form will detect. Try to make the form cohere as whole.

Networking may not come naturally but is a learned skill. Seek out as many opportunities as possible to speak to members of the profession, especially if you can find positions in an environment that gives an opportunity to do so (for example with a solicitor’s firm or in a position in court such as a legal adviser). Explore these other options to equip yourself with the information to make up your own mind about whether the Criminal Bar is for you. This will also be useful when dealing with questions in pupillage interview about why you have chosen the Bar.

The Bar is a supportive community. If you ask, you will find a lot of people who are willing to help prospective or aspiring barristers. It is useful to sit in the public gallery of a variety of courts, just observing gives good insight, you can even take the chance at court to speak to practitioners when they are not busy.

Real life advocacy experience is very helpful, for example with charities and advocacy organisations that enable you to take responsibility for preparing and presenting your own cases.

The Inns provide schemes to assist aspiring pupils by assigning a mentor.

Each written application is considered carefully as a whole by at least three people in Chambers. Although there is a general expectation of a 2:1 degree or better, there may be many reasons why exam results are not as good as they were hoped to be. We do not have a mechanistic approach but take such matters into consideration and judge each application on a case by case basis.

The free text questions at the end of the application present an important opportunity to demonstrate your potential, whether or not your academic grades do you justice.

It will be noted, especially if relevant to criminal law. However, if you are just doing it for the sake of looking good on a pupillage form, you may want to ask if that is the best way to spend your year.

We do not have predetermined expectations. You may wish to demonstrate how other experiences and interests help you in personal or career development. Having outside interests may enable you to show something of your personality, in the form and in interview. Consider doing something completely different. As well as setting you apart at interview it is good for your own well-being to keep up something else that is important to you.

Inns of Court scholarships will doubtless help your application in that they evidence that you demonstrated particular ability or commitment to the scholarship panel at your Inn. You will not be penalised if you do not have scholarships or awards. The strength of your written application will be assessed as a whole.

We periodically review our criteria and occasionally amend them. We aim to be transparent. The criteria for assessing written applications are published on our website and the Gateway. If you are invited for an interview you will receive an email in advance telling you the criteria against which the panel will be assessing your interview.

Chambers will adapt ourselves as far as we can to assist anybody and make sure such matters are addressed in a proper way. Chambers is sensitive to personal issues that may require adjustments to the way we work with them. When applying, please make us aware if you have needs or difficulties that may require any adjustments to the interview process. As a pupil, it is something to discuss with your pupil supervisor: they are your spokesperson when it comes to talking about accommodation to be made with the clerks and other members of chambers.

Remember people are volunteering their free time to mark a large volume of forms. They will appreciate brevity. Don’t ‘ramble on’. Don’t be afraid to use bullet points, if that is more succinct.

The questions are not inviting academic essay style answers. Chambers want to see evidence based answers in which you demonstrate an ability to advance a reasoned position, as you might when seeking to persuade a court or advising a client.

Treat your application form like a piece of written advocacy. In court you need to be able to make your points in a succinct and attractive way. Invest time in honing your answers. Consider printing out your draft, re-reading and editing.

We are seeking reassurance that applicants have the right instincts, practical judgement and empathy, rather than an encyclopaedic knowledge of the BSB Code of Conduct. Often it is about your approach to a dilemma, identifying and balancing competing priorities, rather than jumping to the ‘right answer’. You should know and understand how to apply the Core Duties. You may also be assisted by the Bar Council ethics guidance: https://www.barcouncilethics.co.uk/subject/ethics/.

We are widely thought of as a friendly, unpretentious set of chambers. Surprising as it may sound, the interview can be an enjoyable experience where you can allow your personality to shine through.

We recognise there has not been the usual opportunity to have a mini-pupillage with us during the last 18 months. We will look for a demonstrated commitment to criminal practice more generally. You can gather something of the range and level of work of our members by their profiles and by the updates on social media and our website.