pupillage

Alexander Learmonth and Adam Baradon consider what the proposed new structures for chambers will mean for future recruitment to the Bar.  

The Legal Services Act 2007 opened the door to barristers practising in partnership with one another (BOP) or with other legal professionals in a Legal Disciplinary Partnership (LDP). The Bar Standards Board consultation on this ended  on 1 March 2009. It focused on the competition law aspects. The Law Society has already started accepting applications from solicitors’ firms who wish to include non-lawyer managers or to become “recognised bodies” and 14 LDPs officially came into being on 31 March 2009. 

The BSB has set up a private forum, on its website, for current pupillage students to discuss their pupillage experiences. This forum will run for the length of the Pupillage Review, which is being chaired by Derek Wood QC and is seeking to improve the pupillage stage of training.
All current pupillage students were emailed a password to access the forum in March. The passwords ensure anonymity, so we hope this encourages students to participate with frank comments about their pupillage experiences. Any current pupillage student who wishes to participate but has not received a password should email Kofi Kramo, BSB Communications Officer, at: kkramo@barstandardsboard.org.uk 

Things to remember if you are approaching the end of your nonpractising period of pupillage: 

The BSB has set up a private forum, on its website, for current pupillage students to discuss their pupillage experiences. This forum will run for the length of the Pupillage Review, which is being chaired by Derek Wood QC and is seeking to improve the pupillage stage of training.
All current pupillage students will have been emailed a password to access the forum in March. The passwords ensure anonymity, so we hope this encourages students to participate with frank comments about their pupillage experiences. 

Any current pupillage student who wishes to participate but has not received a password should email Kofi Kramo, BSB Communications Officer, at: kkramo@barstandardsboard.org.uk 

By the time a barrister first addresses the bench, he or she could have debts of £60,000. Alexander Learmonth considers the young Bar’s debt problem.  

Lord Neuberger’s Entry to the Bar working group assumed that students could leave university as much as £30,000 in debt. The average, according to the PUSH student debt survey (see www.push.co.uk), is £14,452 for students in England, increasing by about 10% per year. The cost of the Bar Vocational Course (BVC) year was estimated at a further £25,000. That’s a fair estimate: some providers are now charging as much as £14,495 for the year, which includes the Bar Standards Board’s validation fee of £395. 

Patrick Ryan reports on the 17th Bar National Mock Trial Competition and some fine examples of future advocates.  

More than 200 school students were welcomed to Liverpool, Europe’s Capital of Culture for 2008, for the final of the Bar National Mock Trial Competition on Saturday 1 March. They gathered at the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, having battled through the earlier stages of the competition knowing that only one of the 16 schools who had made it to the final could be victorious. The teams were organised into four leagues, with the two highest scoring teams overall progressing to a grand final. 

The disparity between BVC and pupillage intake is one of the issues to be addressed in a major review, explains Dr John Carrier.  

The different stages of education at the Bar—academic, vocational, pupillage and CPD—need to be approached in an holistic way, and for that reason, Derek Wood QC, fresh from having chaired the Review of the Bar Vocational Course (BVC),  has agreed to the request of the Bar Standards Board (BSB) that he lead a major review of pupillage.