On with the way to climb the greasy pole…

Thirdly, front it up. Every so often there is a piece of evidence or information which is damning. The Judge peers at you and says pleasantly, ‘But if this is right then it poses a significant problem for you Mr Jones, does it not?’ You say ‘Yes my Lord’. Again, it can be difficult to do – especially if the point is one which you had taken considerable care to obscure. But you have to confront the weaknesses in your case. You win brownie points for dealing with matters this way – the Judge will appreciate the fact that you understand the problem and will be more receptive to what you say next, which will hopefully be something like ‘but not fatal unless your Lordship makes the 2 decisions on law and 3 findings of fact to which I now turn’.

As you go on and know your Judge it can help to get there before the Judge does, starting by saying ‘I anticipate that your Honour will have reservations about this issue because my submission appears to be that no duty of care is owed to a neighbour. Would it be of assistance to deal with that immediately?’. The Judge will not only be grateful for the realism but may also perk up at the prospect of an early day.

However, judgement is key in all things as exemplified by the fourth matter which can help you climb the internal ladder – don’t be a sycophant. Good Judges are as alive to this as anyone (bad Judges less so, alas). Your primary obligation is to your client and his case. Abandoning that case in the face of a demonstration of judicial hostility is unhelpful to your client and to you. If the Judge destroys your case by picking up on its most prominent weakness and you do not have an answer (save – and I have heard it said – ‘I was hoping your Honour wouldn’t raise that point) then for what, precisely, have you been paid? If you have thought about it then you should have an answer and that answer should be pressed – politely to be sure but firmly.

It can happen that, in the course of argument and discussion, you change your mind. So what? You are not being asked to judge the case, nor to believe in it. Clients sometimes like to feel that you believe in their case. The adage that a man who acts for himself has a fool for a lawyer comes to mind. Your job is to take an objective view. Your own feelings are at best irrelevant and at worst an impediment. If you have reassessed then the discussion is with your own client in private. It may be too late to change anything by then. You may change your view back when under less pressure. You know what your case is; you have analysed it and understood it: so, put it. Later on, if you have to retreat, do so having exhaustively discussed the point with your client and your solicitor and do it with grace.

Fifthly, be prepared. Neither your Judge nor your opponent will give you any credit for a brilliant skin-of-your teeth performance unless the matter to which you are reacting is really brand new. Unless you are one of the very few geniuses (and there are a few) who genuinely require no real preparation time, do the prep. The man who once said to my father as the prosecution opened its case ‘I’m so glad I haven’t read this. It lets me get a jury’s eye view’ was one of those people who didn’t need the prep time; the case was simple and he wasn’t telling the truth anyway.

Sixth, be pleasant. Of course you can always mash your opponent’s face into the floor and make his client cry. You can sometimes humiliate the Judge. But unless these really are critical parts of your case (they may be – it’s amazing how many people are prepared to settle after something bruising has happened) don’t do it. You will meet your opponent and your Judge again. If they dislike you then the next time will not be smooth. As you go along you will inevitably make mistakes: you will need your opponent’s forbearance and the Judge’s kindliness. Whether you will have them will be very largely up to you. That does not mean you must not press the advantage, should you have it. But don’t be nasty or brutal for fun.

Next, play a part in the profession. Everything the Bar does save work is voluntary. We regulate ourselves; we educate ourselves; we entertain ourselves; we promote the profession ourselves; we look after each other in sickness and health; we guide ourselves; we help each other; we organise events for ourselves. All of those things take a massive amount of work: they benefit everyone and it helps to be a part of it.

The paths to professional involvement are the specialist bar associations, the circuits, the Inns, the bar Council and the BSB. There is also plenty of work to be done within individual sets of Chambers. Of course, barristers are as prone to anyone else to comments about politicians and pushers. But still, get involved. Find something you enjoy doing and which you think you do well and then offer your services. You will meet people whose company you will enjoy, you will learn things from them, you will actually be contributing to your profession and – if asked – they may one day say nice things about you. But it does need to be in that order.

Finally, be unfailingly kind and gracious about everyone else. This is, of course, impossible. So in default of that do be prepared to take it. Don’t expect your status as person first with the news of Bloggins’ unfortunate misquote in front of HH Judge Sarcastic to make you immune and, if you laugh at the misfortune of others, you should be prepared to not only laugh at your own but to tell others about them. Have a sense of humour and learn to laugh at yourself.

At bottom, what Barristers and Judges are doing when talking about each other is assessing whether the person being talked about has reached the level at which he is incompetent. That is to some extent an objective view. The internal ladder is its subjective element. People will judge you kindly if you have climbed it. That is not only because they think well of you but also because you are actually good at the job. Of course, you don’t have to climb the internal ladder. Plenty of barristers are content with a niche they find for themselves and are not troubled by ambition. There is nothing at all wrong with that – such people tend to be happy, married (still) and relaxed. Naturally people hate them.

However, the Bar is unique because it offers the chance of a change of career at a time when other people in other jobs are being gently sidelined and put out to grass. If you can give yourself that opportunity it is sensible. You may not take it when, in 30 years time, the decision looms, but it’s nice to have the choice.

The podcast I did with Charon QC for the College of Law series is now up and can be found here. I hope it helps.

The internal ladder: possibly the only ladder you have to climb of whose existence you are ignorant.

You might have thought that this job was easy. You get a pupillage, a tenancy, your clerks get you work, you do the work well, professional success is yours. Well, up to a point Lord Copper.

The internal ladder is the route to professional success. It is certainly true that, save in a minority of cases, you can’t climb it unless you are good at your job, but being good at your job is not enough. If you want to be a Recorder, a Judge, a Tribunal Chairperson or even Queen’s Counsel, you must also scale the internal ladder. By which I mean that you must attract the attention, respect and ultimately (you hope) admiration of those whose support you will need to succeed professionally. These people never used to be solicitors and are not often solicitors now. You need solicitors to support you externally – to give you work. This isn’t about getting the work so much as how you are perceived to do it.

Fortunately the process is becoming more democratic. The bottom rung of the internal ladder used to be where you went to school. There were days where the word of the Presiding Judge could break a promising career even if the barrister were transparently brilliant and the Presiding Judge transparently both stupid and odious. Equally – as Gilbert and Sullivan realised – it could often be a good career move if you “fell in love with a rich attorney’s elderly ugly daughter”.

In those days you had to have good table manners, the right conversation, the right hobbies, the right wife and the right appeal. It’s a miracle anyone bright ever made it. When I was called in 1986 it was still popularly believed – although I have no idea whether it was true – that the High Court Bench was capped at 6 Jews. There was no discussion at all about women or Asian or Black people. Since then the Bar has been dragged into the 21st Century and a real commitment to equality. That we occasionally get it wrong is obvious but the process is one in which I rarely find people unwilling to cooperate. The reason, I think, is simple. The Bar is under attack as a profession. Almost everyone realises that in order to survive and thrive we have to attract the best people. Almost everyone realises that your school and University are not an actual guarantee.

But still there is an internal ladder. People talk. It’s a small profession and what barristers like to talk about is other barristers. Eventually some of those barristers become Judges. They still like to talk about other Barristers. That is because a Judge never (unless a member of the Court of Appeal) sees another Judge judging. Given that what is most interesting are personal idiosyncrasies, disasters, rows and nose-enders and given that Judges see barristers every day, it follows that Judges talk about barristers – a lot. For every professional appointment for which a barrister applies there is a list of consultees. These used to be automatic but we are, thankfully, moving away from that. However, for the current silk selection, the applicants must be assessed by 4 Judges. The current Recorder exercise talks of 3 referees, one of whom should be your Head of Chambers.

Because many Judges are asked for their views, and because Judges talk, it is inevitable that your general reputation will matter. The same goes for what other barristers think of you. Without support from within the profession you will find it hard to get anywhere. How do you get that support?

Firstly, make your integrity absolute. No one will forgive you for sharp practice and it will not matter how good you are. Of all the things about which people gossip, this is the number one hot topic. I am not talking about obvious dishonesty. I am talking about telling your opponent that you will not take a point and then taking it without warning. About suddenly whipping out the photos in cross-examination and throwing a copy over the table to your opponent without ever having mentioned their existence beforehand. About producing the authority without disclosing it. About altering your case to fit what the Judge has previously said and discretely discarding the evidence which you had said you were going to call until then.

If you are lucky, someone will ask you why you did those things, you will have a sort of explanation – usually based on inexperience – and judgment will be reserved. If you are unlucky or if you do it more than once the probability is that word will go round. If you are very junior someone might mention it to your pupil supervisor or Head of Chambers. They might try and show you why you should not do it. They might write you off. If you regularly behave in such ways – and there is no way to hide it – you may be successful and make a lot of money, but professionally you will go nowhere.

Secondly, you do not take bad points. In every case there will be something you can say. In most cases there will be quite a lot. Your job is to review every point and select the good ones. Then your job is only to make the good points. This is more difficult than it sounds: you may not trust your judgement – maybe the point you reject is the best of all. The spectacle of incompetent barristers taking every available point is familiar – some clients (especially in crime) equate it with battling. Do remember that most criminal clients are not candidates for Mastermind. Equally, you may feel that you are going into the Courtroom naked with just your one point. Well, maybe you are but that is likely to be down to your case. The case will not improve by padding out your one good point with 3 poor ones.

Because this post is so long I am going to cut it here. I will post the remainder on Thursday or thereabouts.

Congratulations. You have made it, you are through the door, your feet are under the table, your head is in the clouds, your eyes are gazing on a distant future and your ears are burning.

Now what?

There are two traditional matters to concentrate on, and one brand new one. This post will deal with the first traditional matter.

That matter is the external ladder which you must climb. You have to build yourself a practice. Traditionally this came from doing other peoples’ returns and devilling. Now it also comes from being part of a team. If your Chambers is highly specialised there may be only one team. Otherwise, you should try and join every team going. You won’t know what you like (you may have an idea) until you have tried it. You are trying to maximise your exposure to work. Do everything once and the clerks will always be able to rely on your previous experience. The best time to do something for the first time is very soon after call. There are some exceptions to this rule: for example, soon after call isn’t the best time to argue that proprietory estoppel point in the Supreme Court (never let it be said this Blog is not up to date). But as a rule of thumb, it works.

You should also be the junior tenant who likes to say ‘yes’. Your clerks will not thank you for ‘well, it’s not really my field’, or ‘I don’t feel comfortable’ or (God forbid) ‘I’m sorry but I’m too busy’. Of course you’re uncomfortable. Your comfort envelope is hardly big enough to put a stamp on. But it will not grow unless you are prepared to stretch it. You have more time than you would believe (hard though it may be to accept, new tenants are barely working compared to the hours they will have to put in if they take off) so use it: swot up on new topics, go and see things being done in Court and read law reports. Then say yes to whatever you are offered unless it is really laughable. You should be able to judge what you should and should not take pretty quickly and your pupil supervisor, who should have a good idea of your capabilities, will help you.

You also need to impress your solicitor. The solicitor is more important to you than the lay client, who may well only ever need to consult you once. Even more important, if you are doing crime or pi, is the solicitor’s clerk (or paralegal as they now tend to be known). This is the source of your work. Be nice; be polite; be interested; know the name; ask about the children, the tomatoes, the morris dancing, the philately – whatever it is. Do not, as I have heard being said of junior counsel, be not worth briefing ‘because X’s head is so far up X’s bottom that X would not hear anything I said’.

Do what you are asked to do. Ring up after cases and tell the solicitor what has happened. Provide Advices and Opinions in double quick time. Give you opinion when asked – do not hedge it with a University type answer.

Constantly review your own performance. Do not sign the paperwork off until it really is as good as you can make it. The drink will wait. Dinner will wait. The love fest with the new significant other will wait (although, as rather too many barristers have discovered, the significant other may not). Do not put the brief away until you really do know not just what your submission is, but how you are going to put it and in what order.

But this is to shade into the next topic, which is how to climb the internal ladder. The final (new) topic is how to work as part of a team in Chambers. So, as they say in all the best cliffhangers:

To be continued…

Firstly, a hello to new readers. Thanks to WordPress’s monitoring tools (not quite CCTV in everyone else’s computer, but close) I can tell that some of the older posts are getting a lot of attention. Presumably, therefore, a new generation is gearing up for a shot at the grand prize. I wish you all luck and I hope you all have a plan B – obtaining pupillage is not getting any easier.

To make this clear, and to try and address the particular issue, I quote below from a comment sent by ‘Bedroom Barrister’, who I can be reasonably sure is a bloke.

I completed the BVC in 08, and since then have had 7 interviews. I missed out on my 1st choice chambers (provincial) on a vote of 2-1, and was placed on the reserve list for another chambers in London.

I do, I believe, tick all the ‘barrister candidates must have’ boxes: I have 2x scholarships, a masters, ran my own company, undertook several minis, taught Westlaw for Sweet & Maxwell for 2 years, and had a career as a rugby player before coming to law earlier than originally planned through injury (I am 28)

My first choice chambers have re-interviewed me and turned me down for a second time. what I would like to know is, what the chuff can I do to go one step further and obtain an offer?

The one thing I have lacked to date is real advocacy experience, so I put myself through FRU as an employment rep and took up a position as a county court advocate (solicitor’s agent) to gain experience (although this is relatively recent).

I am, I believe, a friendly chap, I get on well with most, and I have a genuine, not rehearsed, interest in law and current affairs.

Friends tell me ‘if you’re good enough to get interviews you’re good enough to get pupillage’ but I am truly concerned that this isn’t the case. My entire life has gone on hold while I send out applications, my poor girlfriend has to put up with my cloudy moods, and I find myself for the first time not knowing what to do!

Any thoughts would be gratefully received!

You are right – you tick the boxes. What seems apparent from this is that so, too, do a great many people. Ticking the boxes is no longer sufficient in itself.

Tempting though it is to suggest that it is the name that is causing the problem (try Courtroom Barrister), it seems to me that what you actually lack is feedback. Because you don’t say much about your interviews I am assuming they went reasonably well. If your panel was divided 2-1 then it was clearly close. The question is what swung it the other way. This could be nothing, it could be a question of whether the other person was more likeable or more ‘deserving’ or cleverer than you. It could be that the potential pupil master saw more in them (I have taken part in discussions which included all the above). The problem is that I don’t know and nor do you.

So, the advice is to get on the phone and ask. It may be that you are simply unlucky – that is certainly a possibility. But it may be that there is something about your interview performance which is counting against you and which you could deal with if only you knew about it. That is what feedback is all about. Even if your chosen Set doesn’t promise feedback I would ask. They can only say no but having been interviewed twice they must have seen something they liked and they should be willing to help.

The comments on the posts below dealing with Chambers’ approaches to pupillage show that lack of feedback is a bugbear. I don’t think we are very good at it as a profession: too many people are told something like, ‘You were very good but not quite as good as the person we took on’. That is roughly equivalent to the fortune teller saying, ‘You will travel widely and meet a stranger’ – well durr.

Because we are not very good at it, you must be. Ask specific questions: ‘What was the difference between my CV and the person who got pupillage?’. ‘What was it in the interview that made the difference?’  ‘Could you please tell me the 3 criteria on which I scored lowest?’ ‘Did I score the lowest/highest of anyone interviewed in any criterion? If so, please could you tell me which one?’ ‘Did you identify anything lacking in my CV of interview which, had I displayed it, would have made the difference?’ In other words – push.

The only other advice about the process I can give is, if you try again, to identify a banker set. You are clearly good enough to get a pupillage. Almost everyone interviewed is good enough and those who get to the last 2 or 3 certainly are. There is no doubt that there is an element of luck involved. So chose a set a level below where you really want to go. It’s easier to move once you’re a few years call and, who knows, you may like it there.

Ok – the agony uncle bit is done. Next up is an issue about how to survive the start of tenancy (also a fairly frequently asked question). That will tie in nicely to the remaining posts in ‘Tenancy and How to Get It’ which I am aware I left unfinished. It should also help non-pupils gain some understanding of what barristers actually look for which may help in mini-pupillages. All of which will come in the next couple of months.

As the recession comes to an (apparent, so we are told) end, we find ourselves in interesting times. Perhaps the most pressing question for readers of this blog is how the need to repay the mortgage we took out over our own future will impact upon legal services.

This will be different for publicly and privately funded work. Publicly funded work will, I fear, have to bear its share – and more – of the overall downturn in public expenditure. Expenditure on legal services is not popular with voters, who tend to assume that everyone is guilty and that they are paying for cunning lawyers to enable these people to get away with it – at least until they are these people. The same may not apply to family work, but both crime and family have the further difficulty of the civil service’s attitude to barristers generally, which is politely described as incomprehension regarding the scope of our job and its responsibility (I have heard it called much worse), and the consequent desire to link our earnings to, say, the level of a civil servant. The fact that most of us work a 70+ hour week tends not to be factored in here.

It seems to me inevitable that the current decline in the investigation and prosecution of fraud will accelerate. I am not talking here about the SFO’s cases, although it would not surprise me to see a rethink there either. I am talking about the local type frauds which are enormously expensive to investigate and prosecute and where there is already a tendency to ask the alleged victims to provide the evidence themselves. As regulation is beefed up I foresee the investigation and prosecution of regulatory breach as being increasingly passed to the regulator (funded, of course, by the institutions and professions which it regulates), with the primary penalty being the equivalent of being struck off. It may then be that the confiscation regime is extended so that a regulatory finding can form the basis of a confiscation.

Similarly, the government will periodically renew its efforts to abolish trial by jury (expensive) and to limit the offences which can be tried in the Crown Court (expensive). Expect the idea of a fixed penalty for minor offences to be re-introduced (cheap). The guiding principle, although the use of that word is ironic, is the cost of the exercise, not the reliability or justice of the result. The one thing which would surely bring down the cost of criminal justice will probably not be discussed: that is the legalisation of drugs. I am not taking a view here, but drugs are behind a substantial amount of crime, well over half of all drugs users regularly offend and we then pay to prosecute them and incarcerate them. Providing drugs on prescription may be cheaper.

By the same token I would expect support to the challenge of government decisions to be reduced. These are already unpopular in Whitehall, with the proposition that the government may act unfairly being treated with surprise edging into disdain. The fact that challenges cost money will be a ready made excuse to restrict the money available. The challenges themselves are unlikely to be abolished – we do not yet see quite such an overweening sense of infallibility – but the ease of making them will increasingly depend on our willingness to work for free. The exception is challenges to immigration decisions: the government has already tried to abolish these and I expect them to try again.

In privately funded work, there will be a shift from an hourly rate to a fixed price, as clients try to keep expenditure to known limits. How we negotiate the rate for a task which is often unknowable at its outset will be an interesting challenge for barristers and their clerks. As alternative business models take hold there may be scope for contracting out various parts of the work. You may find yourselves able to work for Chambers as a legal researcher to a far greater extent than currently.

Expect professions and institutions paying for their own regulation to try and control the legal fees of those thus engaged, or to seek to ensure that costs recovered by a successful individual be limited. In my view one of the challenges for the Bar is to seek to become involved at the stage of prevention rather than cure. This is currently largely left to solicitors. There is no reason why it should be.

Finally expect professional regulation to begin to examine competence. We have vigorously resisted it but in my view the pressure will become unsustainable. Firstly because we will have to pay for our own regulation, so that my mistakes (not that there are any, obviously) will cost other people money. Secondly because the Bar will need publicly to demonstrate competence across the board in order to survive. Thirdly, because it provides a way to ensure that those ensconced in place do not take undue advantage of their position to prevent new talent obtaining its deserved slice of the pie.

Madame Myerson foresees a reduction in the numbers in independent practice of around 25% – 33% in the next 10 years. Let’s hope she is just wrong, rather than being Cassandra. For those of you about to start the BVC, it’s as well to know what you are going into.

A source sings to me that Lamb Chambers (on neither the wall nor the buttress and so previously in a neutral position) has gone straight to the top of the buttress of acclaim charts by sending out the following rejection letter (so far as I can tell to all unsuccessful candidates).

Lamb Chambers regrets to inform you that your application for pupillage at these chambers has not been successful. There were well over 200 applicants for just 2 places and with such stiff competition it was inevitable that we would have to reject many very strong candidates such as yourself.

We must apologise for the tardy manner in which your application has been considered. We encountered insuperable problems with the OLPAS system this year and in the end were obliged to print off and sort all applicants by hand. The automated method for notifying applicants of the progress of their applications was unworkable and as a result we are obliged to transmit all email rejections individually.

Lamb Chambers is unlikely to subscribe to OLPAS next year and if you too have been inconvenienced by this system then we would like to extend our apologies on behalf of the entire Bar to you for submitting aspiring pupils to such an appalling ordeal.

And so say all of us – but in this case someone actually has said it. Good.

In an ideal world the authorities would establish what happened with the Portal and publish it. This is not a call to identify anyone responsible, but rather to demonstrate that what went wrong has been understood and sorted. I have always supported OLPAS as a system (see my very first post of all) but I think Lamb Chambers (who make the position clear for all to see here) have got this one right. Better go it alone than another year of a collective effort going so disastrously wrong.

What is needed now is urgent reassurance that next year will not just be better, but that it will be perfect. Otherwise OLPAS is in trouble. And I still think that would be a shame. There is plenty to be said for making the system a level playing field. However, at the moment the field may be level but it’s also muddy, treacherous to negotiate and full of clods.

Below is an email (published with the writer’s permission), which reflects a not uncommon problem. A selection of interviews pre BVC, which suggests that there is a reasonable chance of an eventual offer, but the prospect of a post BVC year to fill before beginning.

Dear Simon

I’ve been reading your blog for a while and it did say we could get in touch…

I finished my law degree this year, and have just been through my first OLPAS round. I was put on one reserve list, but ultimately got no offers. I know this is not uncommon, and should really have been expected, but it still comes as a bit of a blow. I do think I have a reasonable chance of getting pupillage eventually, and will not just be wasting my time and money on the BVC, but it appears that I will probably have to have a ‘gap year’ post-BVC now. I think I would feel a bit better about it if I had some idea of what to fill that year with – I would rather get some sort of relevant/interesting work than just get any old job, but I do need to do something that pays the bills; I thought you might know of some options. I believe paralegalling is the standard option, but I have heard of people struggling to get paralegal work as they are ‘overqualified’. A friend has recommended the Law Commission, but I’m not exactly sure what that would involve.

In a sense, of course, the answer is that if you have pupillage it doesn’t matter and you should simply make as much money/have as good a time (delete as appropriate) as possible. Or your Chambers-to-be may have some recommendation or requirement. But there is also the possibility of another season in which you make the play-offs but don’t get promotion, as all Leeds United fans know.

On the basis that what you want to achieve is to shine up the CV it would be sensible to consider where you are applying. Paralegaling is fine providing it is relevant to your pupillage. Working as a commercial conveyancer isn’t going to help if you are doing personal injury work. You would not be overqualified if you already had a pupillage – sometimes this seems to be an excuse for not taking people on in case they never leave. But unless you really think that you need to prep yourself up to know the technicalities of your chosen area or that the firm for which you work will brief you, I don’t myself see that paralegaling has much to offer. It seems to me to be the default choice because it is (or was) relatively easy to get a job and that the job is vaguely legal. Most paralegals are anonymous to anyone with a brief to give away to a junior tenant.

The Law Commission is a good idea but your academics need to be good. It concerns legal research and policy, which always helps to broaden a CV. Because it is a competitive appointment it looks good. It is not currently recruiting, but keep an eye out here.

A temporary post with the government would also appeal. There are some of these around and they can be accessed here.  You could also try Justice (go here) and Liberty (nothing currently available but keep an eye on it here), the CAB etc. All of these would look good on a CV because the organisations are broadly respected (yes, even the Government) and the work is likely to be interesting and challenging, at least in the perception of an outside observer.

Working abroad would be good if you could do some human rights work – death row, or even the UN. This shows a commitment to the law and its processes and – as the vast majority of Barristers recoil from the death penalty with an almost visceral disgust – it also speaks well to the reader of the CV. Probably the best known organisation is Reprieve and they can be found here. The UN page is here.

If you are interested in crime you could always try the Legal Services Commission. Most lawyers have certain views about them but the inside track would always be helpful and, providing you don’t spend your pupillage interview defending the reason why Barristers are not officially allowed to be paid to think about a case, you will be ok.

Finally there is that good old-fashioned standby – ushering. The pay isn’t great but you get to meet loads of people, you learn a lot about the job and it’s interesting. It gives you something which is just as important as substantive knowledge – an idea of how the system impacts on those who have to use it and an ability to talk about the law as if you were on the inside. It should also get rid forever of some of the airs and graces to which certain members of this great profession occasionally become prone. See your local court centre for details.

I have not dealt with post graduate degrees because I have already posted about them here and here.

The original correspondent – who would prefer to remain anonymous – got a sneak preview, which seems only fair.

You will all have bought this, of course. If not, it is available here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Path-Pupillage-Guide-Aspiring-Barrister/dp/1847034012.

However, if you have not bought it and you have a little time to go, then you may want to hold off for a while because the authors are planning a second edition. Having both been taken on (Vol 2 – The Trials of Tenancy?), and put on their respective pupillage committees, they would like to know what you would like to know. If you have an idea to contribute please email them at pathtopupillage@gmail.com which is an address created specifically for the purpose.

The new edition will be updated and will have additional chapters dealing with how to convert from being a solicitor, the bar as a second career, how to deal with more than one offer (I assume this is not only about getting ecstatically drunk and losing all your friends), third sixes and alternative careers. If you can think of anything else you would like to know about, email and tell the authors. The same applies if there are people from whom you would like to hear – the book has a number of quotes from practitioners and the judiciary. Whose words of wisdom would assist you?

I don’t normally do puffs, but this is a genuinely useful book and if you are thinking of the Bar then you should read it. You can help make it even more useful. My own two pennorth is that I would like to hear from two people, both of  whom had a standard degree and a standard CV and one of whom got a pupillage. Was it just luck that made the difference, or is there something that can be done to make every applicant stand out to the right Chambers? I would also like to hear from people who didn’t make it and who would not now go through the process, about why they didn’t stop when the odds were so obviously against them (I don’t simply mean numerically speaking). There are a lot of you out there saying something like, “I know I haven’t really got the grades or the CV but I’m sure that it will come right for me”. Most of the time, I’m afraid, it won’t. When those people have spent £12,000 and 3 years of their lives and are not barristers, what advice would they have given their younger, more optimistic, selves?

Finally, given the debate that has been raging here, I would like a Chapter about how to make the most of modern application procedures. Chambers may not adopt them, but I wonder if, even so, a candidate could make more of themselves by utilising the latest knowledge. There must be professionals out there who would be willing to be quoted.

Alex and George tell me that they will update the Chapter on OLPAS and the PP. I advise the printers to use acid proof paper.

I have been wondering what Chambers could do to improve the process of applying.

Firstly, they could make clear what they are looking for and how they assess it. If you apply for a Recordership or for Silk you are given a list of ‘competencies’ you have to demonstrate. It seems to me that a list of qualities that a set looked for in a pupil would help the Chambers and the applicants. It would provide a guide to the judgement of the applicants and more information than the PP form. At the same time, Chambers could publish their scroing systems for interview. It would be interesting to see how each set prioritised various skills and it might help people hone their applications.

Secondly, the PP could be adjusted to automatically keep applicants in touch with what is happening. It should record which Chambers meet target dates and send out a standard message when they do not. Applicants would not be in the dark and Chambers would not be able to ignore commitments.

Thirdly, Chambers ought to undertake the internal exercise of measuring up the quality of the pupil eventually chosen against the questions asked and the composition of the pupillage committee. This is a long term programme and it would necessarily be private. But there is no reason why sets should not see how good their own techniques are and start to keep some data so that an assesment can be made.

Fourthly, when Chambers take a pupil on, the first task of the person in charge of pupillage and the new junior tenant ought to be to debrief the new tenant on their interview, their pupillage experience and the weaknesses that are perceived. That is not to say that this is the be all and end all. But it is the one chance a set of Chambers has to understand how its procedures are perceived from the other side.

Fifthly, Chambers would ideally give feedback to rejected interviewees. This is tricky because if you interview a great many applicants it becomes impossible. But the default position should be that feedback will be given and Chambers should have to explain why they will not. Chambers should also ask for feedback from candidates. My hunch is that a number of the complaints made below would not be tolerated by Heads of Chambers who knew that it was happening on a regular basis.

Sixthly, the Bar should try and ensure that the small minority in the habit of dismissing every criticism as whinging do not run pupillage selection processes in their Chambers.