Our Episode Transcripts are produced by Descript. Some words/dialogue may not be transcribed with 100% accuracy.
[00:00:00]
Ellie: Thank you for joining us on Law Talks and to start the interview, could you tell us what stage of a legal career you're currently at?
Bertie: Yeah hi Ellie. I've just finished my undergraduate law degree. And I'm now studying the bar course at City University before beginning my pupillage next year.
Ellie: Nice, perfect.
How has, how has starting the bar course been?
Bertie: I'd say that it's, it's, it's good. Whereas for me, undergrad was this enveloping, intense, stimulating experience, which I loved the bar course is a bit more of a standard nine to five, but that's quite a nice change. It doesn't set the pulse racing with excitement, but it's also relatively manageable.
I can, I can go in a bit to the content and the, the average weekly structure and stuff if you'd like.
Ellie: Yeah, that would be great. You have kind of what your average week entails. And I guess what that kind of 9 to 5 actually involves would be great.
Bertie: Sure. In terms [00:01:00] of the content, you learn and practice the skills of a barrister.
Is, is one part of it, I suppose, and that's advocacy, client conference, drafting writing opinions, and that can be quite fun. But you also have to do the relatively attritional job of learning a plethora of detailed and specific procedural rules. And there does come a point when you're in your third hour of reading about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act that the mind does start to go a bit foggy.
So yeah, the modules are criminal litigation and sentencing, civil litigation, advocacy, conference skills, drafting, opinion writing, and professional ethics in terms of average week, they, they say that you should try to treat it like a genuine nine to five. And I do try to do that. I probably work about 30 to 35 hours a week. And that comprises [00:02:00] 10 hours, roughly, of classes, which are all in person, in groups of about a dozen, and quite interactive, and there are no lectures, and then the remaining 25 hours or so is independent study.
Ellie: Okay. Nice. I guess, yeah, I mean, 10 hours is for relatively small classes. That is quite, quite a lot of contact time, I guess.
Bertie: It is definitely. I mean, it, it depends, I know different universities structure the law degree differently, but I think, especially for those not coming from the GDL, which might be a bit more like that, I don't know. It's something to get used to because we're used to writing an essay all week and then you have one meeting about that and you might go to some lectures, if you will.
Whereas with this, like I had to get used to four hours back to back of classes on like a Monday evening, which was, [00:03:00] yeah, it's a very small violin and compared with what a lot of our friends are doing at this stage in life, but there you go.
Ellie: Yeah, no, I mean, getting used to any, any kind of change in schedules, always a little bit jarring, but and I mean, this is not necessarily a fair question to ask you, but in my experience, I think that when you were talking about the modules, that seems to be true for Of all the unis that offer the bar course, they don't seem to have really differences in actually what you study.
It's all pretty granularly the same.
Bertie: Yeah, the bar courses, I might be about to misdescribe the structure, but I think it's centrally administered by the Bar Standards Board, and there are some core things that you have to study in accordance with their syllabus. Those are in particular criminal litigation, evidence and sentencing, and civil litigation.
And the reading list is literally, it will say read these bullet points from the [00:04:00] bar standards board syllabus. And then other things are slightly more up to the decision of the bar course provider, but basically everyone studies the same stuff. Although the structure can be very different. People might want to look into alternatives to where I am city.
If they, for example, want to be able to be more remote, because I know that the ends of court college of advocacy allows you to Spread the bar course out over a longer period and to do the first part of it completely remotely and so that can be good For people who want to work alongside it and then places like BPP and Uni of Law might have a few more centers around the country Which can be good for people who don't want to have to schlep down to London.
Ellie: Yep. Definitely It's kind of a more I guess how you want to structure your life around the bar then the actual modules when you're, when you're deciding, you mentioned, I had you mentioned at the start that you're going to be selling Pupilage next year after finishing the bar. So obviously you've [00:05:00] gone through the application process.
So please, could you outline your experience of applying for Pupilage? So how many you applied for and things like that?
Bertie: Yeah, I applied in. 2024 or 2023 slash 2024. So the last round on the pupillage gateway, which is the central portal for pupillage applications now, which almost every set uses.
And that was while I was doing my finals. So it was quite busy. But it's, it's doable. In terms of the structure of applying for pupillage. I don't know whether that would be helpful to go into in some detail, because I know it can be a bit confusing when you're starting out on the process but they release all of the offered pupillages, the advertised pupillages in around November, I think on the Pupillage Gateway.
And so around autumn, you want to be getting your profile up on the Pupillage Gateway and having a look at who's offering pupillage that year. And [00:06:00] then in February. You have to send your application forms. And these will be, there will be some generalized information that you give to every set and then there will be some answers that you give to Particular questions that each set puts to you in their own forms.
Then after that, you start to receive either first round interview invitations, or you get paper sifted, which is to say they reject you based on your. application form that happened to me for some sets. It's completely fine. Rejection is the main experience, I think, during the journey to the bar. So it's good to become accustomed to it early on.
And then the first round interviews are around March or April, and these are generally quite short, about 20 minutes or so, and. mostly focused on, to use a horrible word, competency based questions and your experience and [00:07:00] things like tackling a moment of adversity and, or, or, or maybe some broad questions about your interest in the bar.
And there might be a non legal or an ethics based advocacy exercise. For example, They might give you something that's law adjacent and topical. And so I could envisage this year going into 2024, 2025, they might do something around early release of prisoners or employment rights bill or something like that, something that you can be a bit political about, but connects to law.
After that, you then hear about second round interviews and they're in April or May. Those are more like an hour. And they're a lot more intense in my experience. They might send you work to complete in advance or to prepare in advance. The second round itself might take the form of. an interview or an assessed mini pupillage, where you might spend the entire day in [00:08:00] chambers and there'll be some kind of exercise on which they assess you.
Or the, the interview might take the form of a mock client conference or a discussion of a complex legal problem. Something I'd say on this, which might contradict what you read on some chambers websites, is that I think that if I hadn't had a base of legal knowledge, I would have struggled a lot more.
Because some chambers say, you know, Our interviews are designed for people who've been studying law for four months as well as for people who've been studying law for two years. And I think if you're a clever person you can definitely manage it, but in some of my interviews I think I would have felt a bit rudderless without just a base understanding.
So I think it's good to feel relatively confident in the area of law you're going into. And then in around May. We'll come the offers or the rejections after the second round. And that can be a bit of [00:09:00] a merry go round there where some people have reserve offers, some people have firm offers, and then people reject their firm offers to go somewhere else, and then a reserve offer becomes a firm offer.
And yeah, that's how it was for me. It was a rollercoaster of a week but it's all wrapped up by mid May at the latest.
Ellie: Thanks. That's really helpful. And I think that describes a fairly rigorous and I guess brutal process, but yeah, congratulations for, for getting through it. So you kind of talked about applying during your finals.
So obviously you had a lot of other things going on and other commitments. So as a follow up, I mean, how time consuming was the process taking into account, like the application and then the later interview stages?
Bertie: I can't remember if I said, but I applied to 11 sets and I'd say around a dozen is a decent number.
It's, it's tricky to say because I, I, before doing it would always ask people who are ahead of me like, Oh, how many sets should I apply to? And how many is manageable? And actually that's an impossible [00:10:00] question to answer because if you apply to 20 sets and get one interview. Then it's going to be quite manageable.
But if you apply to five sets and get 10 interviews, including second round, then that could be quite intense. So I, I did 13 interviews in total, I think. And alongside finals, that was quite intense and it might've been a slight. drain on my revision time. But it was okay. And you know, everyone has things that they're juggling.
I'd say unless you have an exceptional demand on your time, I think the more standard things like you're doing a degree or you're working a nine till five can be molded around applying for pupillage. You just have to accept that it's going to be a bit of a stressful time really
Ellie: mm hmm Yeah, definitely and as a as a slightly different follow up just because I think you said some really helpful advice about it's actually helpful to have [00:11:00] A fairly strong background in the law area that you you've looked to have pupillage well on the assumption that some of yours were kind of like They had more than one focus area.
Do you think that you needed a kind of background in all of those areas or could you kind of focus in, so if you're applying to a set that maybe has like four areas that they put on their website as their main expertise, do you think you needed that diversity or just having like a good understanding of one or two areas?
Sorry if that's a bit of a red herring question.
Bertie: No, it's, it's a good question and it's, I'm glad you picked up on it actually, because I don't want to overstate. How much legal knowledge you need you do not need to sit there and look at a problem. They give you and go. Ah, yes, section 13 of the Supply and Goods and Services Act applies here.
You just need to have a basic understanding of the principles, especially because we have a common law system. And so, so much of what guides judicial decision making is principle. [00:12:00] You need to understand what the meta principles of the areas are. And I wouldn't even say you need to go into like, Oh, this set does company law.
And so should I read up on company law? Like this, the set I'm going to be doing cubilage at does a lot of company law. And I still have no idea about company law. So that's fine. But it's more like, If you're applying for a public law set, have a base understanding of what goes on in judicial review, what the principles are just maybe have a look back over your notes if you've done any public law.
And then for private law, have an understanding about how different things interact. Maybe know a bit about some of the overarching theories of private law. Because what the, the problems they will give you, sometimes will be very discreet, and it will be like, okay, we're going to give you this Act of Parliament that concerns Marine insurance contracts and you need to apply it, or it might be [00:13:00] like inviting you to talk about six different things.
And you need to think about could a trust be arising from this contract and things like that. So just, just be someone who likes law, basically do not apply for pubilice if you don't like law. Cause you're really not going to be happy.
Ellie: Yeah, no, thanks. That's really helpful. Kind of showing them the level of law and yeah, having a genuine interest is going to very much, very much help.
Okay, so to focus now on that pupil replication, as you said, you did around a dozen what do you think the kind of main skills, experiences are that you would recommend completing to kind of boost the application?
Bertie: Everything I suggest about this is going to come with a big red warning that says my experience was a small sample size.
And so I might've just got entirely lucky and actually wasn't strategically. clever at all, but notwithstanding that, I think the formula, if there is one, isn't actually as mysterious as it can [00:14:00] seem. It's just, it can be hard to get the formula right, but I think it's basically, study well, have a small amount of legal work experience, and And do things that interest you outside that.
And so you don't have to be that person who's got multiple academic prizes, has published articles, worked at the UN, and then a boutique law firm for a few months. You can be like just what you might regard as a more average person. They're not like the chambers who are interviewing you are intelligent people and they will work out whether you are.
Whether you're someone that would work at their set by the way you come across at interview, they really won't put An undue amount of weight on the fact that you've got like 12 mini pupillages [00:15:00] on your LinkedIn profile. And actually I might say something about mini pupillages because all of my experience suggests that you really don't need more than five.
I think two or three alongside maybe some marshalling with a judge or prior completely unrelated employment like working in McDonald's or working in like your local council or whatever. That's great. I got a chancery pupillage and I'd done one chancery mini pupillage and then I'd done a couple in crime, one in property, one in planning and one in personal injury.
But I was told by a barrister that I'd reached my critical mass, as he said, of mini pupillages after about five, I think. And he was like, yeah, just stop doing mini pupillages now. And also, I had a very circuitous route to the bar because I'd done a languages degree before that. And that had allowed me to do some work as [00:16:00] an administrative assistant at a Spanish law firm, which I completely didn't.
do intending to become a barrister later. But yeah, I, I think there's no rush to become a barrister and those with the less obvious routes, the more circuitous routes, can sometimes have the best outcomes. And so yeah, do not worry about racking up mini pubiliches. They just want you to have a bit of a sense of what the profession is like.
They are not a source of credit in and of themselves just because they're on your CV. In terms of the application form itself, I think it's important to recognize that they are a test of your drafting because a big thing that barristers do is drafting documents, whether that's statements of case for court or skeleton arguments or opinions for clients.
And so you need to have impeccable grammar. And a painstakingly clear [00:17:00] structure in all of the answers that you write on the Google Edge gateway forms or any other application form you do. And that can sometimes feel a bit forced. For example, even on the mundane, tell us about your extracurricular interests, I was doing numbered subheadings.
Now I don't know whether that's helped me at all, but if you put yourself in the shoes of the person marking the application forms, it's maybe the 25th one that they've read today. They want it to be incredibly easy to extract from your application form the information that you're trying to convey to them.
And so clarity. Even to the point of simplicity, which might feel in somehow unintellectual, I think is actually a really good thing. And so, yeah, I'd say just pick a few things that you like and study well, so that you be, because the more you study, the more enthusiastic you'll become about law, [00:18:00] if law is right for you.
And so I just talked about my academic study. I'd done a bit of mooting. I talked about my work experience and then beyond that, I was just honest about what I liked. So. current affairs, watching Raphael Nadal play tennis, cooking meals. It's, it's really, don't be too highfaluting or grandiose, just, just be honest about yourself.
Ellie: Perfect. Thank you. That's some really helpful, really helpful advice. Advice and hearing about, I think it's helpful to hear that you don't have to be this kind of fantastic, Person, just the best of the best on the application. It's more about how you write it and draft it. And I guess how you use your experiences that you have to sell yourself.
So thank you. And then I think as a probably quite obvious follow up, looking now to the next part of the application you know, pupillage interviews, they have a really kind of fierce and intimidating reputation, so I guess in sort of general terms, what was your experience of them? How did you find them?
Bertie: I actually [00:19:00] found it to be a really enjoyable experience on the whole. That's not to say that I wasn't filled with nerves on the train down and while sitting in waiting rooms thinking, oh my god, this is going to be an absolute disaster. But once I was in there, I realized this is great. I'm having enjoyable legal discussion with people displaying their legal excellence, their professional excellence.
I really want to work with these people and that just motivates you to, to perform better, I think. But the thing about that is, it highlights how important it is to follow your gut with where you apply. Being tactical, I think, can really backfire in terms of thinking, Oh, I've got a better chance of getting in at this set, or This type of work is more lucrative or whatever.
I just don't think that's going to serve you very well, because if you're not in, if you, if you're not [00:20:00] genuinely enthusiastic about a practice area, they will smell that and you'll be wasting your time and their time. And on practice areas, I'd say you need to be passionate. Passionate's a bit of a toxic word, I think, probably, on application forms, but you need to have a bit of an idea about the area of law as it manifests itself in that particular set's practice.
And so, if you're being interviewed by a human rights set that does mostly criminal defense or immigration, talking exclusively about Strasbourg's recent climate change judgments, may look a bit detached. And so, yeah, I'd say if you are genuinely keen on doing what they do and you're relatively well prepared, you've researched the set a bit, you've got the relatively [00:21:00] basic grounding in law we talked about earlier, then that really sets you up well to go into the interview and enjoy it.
They are demanding and there can be moments where you freeze a bit, I think the best thing to do is always remember to speak slowly, to try to cut out those filler words that I've probably been using throughout this podcast, the ums, the uhs, the you knows, the sort ofs, the kind ofs, although not to the point that you become robotic of course, and be honest if you need them to rephrase a question or take some time to think, because they want to see how you tackle a problem.
They don't want you to see you batting things away like some machine.
Ellie: Thank you. Again, that's really helpful. I mean, particularly the speed of the speed [00:22:00] of talking and filler words. I think that was something I would definitely be thinking about working on before any interviews that if I managed to get some and yeah, I think that's helpful that, you know, It's about like using things, you're absolutely right.
Not that I've had the experience of people in interviews, but if you actually enjoy what you're talking about, I think it just does, it's clear and it comes kind of far more naturally. So you've given, actually just before I kind of asked the rounding out question on that note, I think you, you talked really helpfully about like that interest and being prepared.
Can you kind of answer the question of, I mean, how long did you take to prepare for like for say one interview in the second round that's more legal focused Yeah,
Bertie: I'd say,
I'm trying to think, of my six second rounds, one was an assessed mini pupillage, and I had to spend the day before that preparing some work [00:23:00] to submit before the day. One was a really short interview that was based on a day long assessment they'd given me remotely. One was just a 45 minute interview based on a problem they gave me half an hour beforehand, and so all I really had to do was go back over my notes on that set.
The other was again, or two more in fact, were that they gave me a problem a couple of days in advance and I had to spend probably about a day, maybe even two, researching the law and writing my answer. And you really do have to be disciplined about that and it can be quite intense. And then I think the sixth was again, just quite short.
I turned up, they gave me a legal problem. I had half an hour to research it or work it out. And then you just go in and do the interview. Yeah. And then [00:24:00] go home and sleep and, Be happy that you're no longer doing an interview.
Ellie: Yeah, thank you. That's, that's helpful to kind of give that, that idea and I can see how, I mean, doing it around finals I think that it's very impressive.
It does show that discipline you're talking about because that's a lot of additional prep as well to, you know, after you slept, you probably had to start revising. So a lot of things going on. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you very much. You've given a lot of helpful advice during this interview, but kind of as a final question If you wanted to pick like what your main advice would be to aspiring barristers who are kind of listening to this Podcast and considering applying for the next upcoming Pupil age application round what would be your kind of overall and main advice for them?
Bertie: Yeah, I was thinking about this in advance, and I've jotted four things down, if there's time to go through them. I've probably touched on some of them, but [00:25:00] the first thing I'd say is be utterly honest with yourself about whether you would want to practice at a set. And be part of its culture. Ask yourself the question, would I feel happy and excited in May, accepting an offer of pupillage from these people?
That's really important to ask yourself before you decide where to apply, because it's very easy before you're making the applications, as I was to. I just desperately want to get a pupillage because this career looks amazing and it's, they're like gold dust and I've just got to get a pupillage wherever I can.
But as the process went on, I started to realise that actually to have an offer of pupillage from a set that doesn't really appeal to you is not the best feeling. And so I think it's far better to make some progress in your first year of applying for pupillage with sets that you actually like, even if you don't get any [00:26:00] final offers in that first year, than to apply to some that you're not hugely sure about, but you thought, ah, I might as well apply to them as well.
And then you'll end up in May with a dilemma between accepting a place because you want to get on and be a barrister and deciding to reject your one offer of pupillage as it may be. In the hope of getting a an offer at a set that you actually want to be at later. I look back at the sets, which rejected me from the application form who paper sifted me, and I'm actually glad that some of them did because I don't think I would have enjoyed it there as much.
And so it sounds a bit romantic and wishy washy, but I think it's genuinely true when people say that your set finds you as much as you find it. So just. Be really quite ruthless and be prepared to cast your net quite narrowly, if that's what it means. But obviously don't take that too far. You still need to try to get yourself a job and, [00:27:00] and it doesn't have to be a perfect set, but don't apply to somewhere that just doesn't give you good vibes, basically.
The second. point I've jotted down is about Chambers websites. I always found Chambers websites extremely intimidating. But something that I'm always told now by barristers is that they are made to a significant extent for the eyes of solicitors, not for the eyes of aspiring barristers. And so this, that means two things.
The first is take individual barristers pages with a pinch of salt because they're there to make them look really impressive. to potential solicitor clients who are going to be instructing them. They're not there to intimidate you and me into thinking, oh my god, this person's just so much better than me in every way.
What's the point in applying to this set? A lot of the stuff that's on there profile on their chamber's website won't even have been accomplished by the time they obtained their [00:28:00] pupillage at that set. And so it's not indicator of what you need to get in somewhere. And the second thing is that a set will say on its website that it practices in an area, not because it necessarily does much, but because they want to be instructed in it.
By the solicitor clients who are looking at their websites. And I think a classic one here in, in my area of chancery is something like proprietary estoppel. I see on pretty much every chancery or private client barrister's profile up and down the country that they do lots of proprietary estoppel farm cases.
And I'm thinking there aren't that many family farms and there aren't that many generations. Alive between which there can be these millions of disputes that seem to arise and so What that means is that you don't want to read on a chamber's [00:29:00] website that they do loads of, like, I don't know, say you want to be a criminal barrister and a set says that it does
cross border money laundering type stuff. If they actually don't, it might be a bit weird when you turn up at the interview and are talking about, well, I really want to come to you because you do all this cross border money laundering stuff. And they're kind of thinking, yeah, but we don't really do much of that.
And so the way to. cure this discrepancy between your understanding and reality is to corroborate Chambers claims about what they do with the legal directories like Chambers and Partners, Legal 500. You could also look at Chambers Student, even at Legal Cheek, which do quite good profiles on set. And if the set doesn't have a single ranked barrister in an area of law, they may not be that big on it in reality.
And so it might be worth talking about something in which they are ranked. [00:30:00] The third tip I've jotted down is something I've mentioned before, which is to be prepared and familiar with the experience of pupillage interview. Obviously, you can't do a dry run of pupillage interviews, although you can treat your first year perhaps as a trial run but you at least don't want the interview to be the first time you've tried to say aloud, for example, why you want to be a barrister or how you've overcome a period of adversity in your life.
And so you want to practice those answers and be also comfortable putting forward your arguments about things. And having them tested. Now you don't have to do that by mooting or debating. But you'll be much better if you've spent the last few years actively participating in classes or actively arguing with friends about things in a non toxic way or family ask people questions, defend your [00:31:00] opinions, respond to criticism.
If you're just comfortable with the spotlight being on you and maybe some form of public speaking. That means that you'll go into the interview and just feel so much more relaxed. And adjacent to that, I'd say something that I found really helpful for my whole application experience was that I had a.
Big folder on my computer full of stock answers to all the classic questions. So every time I saw a question that seemed relatively generic, like, why do you want to come to this chambers, et cetera, actually, that's a terrible example, like, why do you want to be a barrister or why do you want to practice in chancery?
I would write down a stock answer and then I had a folder at the end with about 25 stock answers. And I became so familiar with them that they were just second nature to me. Okay. And I could say them so easily in an interview without worrying about the [00:32:00] content of them. I could just focus on the delivery of them.
And something that I quite liked was that for each interview, I would print out the relevant stock answers, my application form, my notes on that set, and any other bits of law that I thought were interesting or relevant to the interview or anything else that they'd asked me to prepare. And I'd print that all out and I'd put it in a ring binder.
And then I wouldn't take my laptop on the train to the interview. And so I'd just be sat on the train with my ring binder. And I just look over that and that would help me to focus on what I needed to prepare. And then I could go into the interview knowing that I was prepared and knowing that I had easy answers to the annoying questions, like the competency questions.
And that just made it so much easier to focus on the harder bits of interview because they are hard and you need to have as much capacity to deal with them as possible. [00:33:00] And fourth thing, sorry this is a bit of a monologue now but I would say about general morale maintain your social life or the things that make you happy outside of study and work and avoid comparisons with other aspiring barristers.
Which might mean with your friends because you really need an outlet, which allows you to stay happy. And that might be friends that might be activities or whatever. And you need to focus on your own progress and not that of others. It's really bad. I think like I have managed to resist having LinkedIn so far, and I know it's very helpful for some people, but I think I would have found it quite damaging for my self esteem because.
I know it may look like, oh this guy has got pupillage and he's giving all this advice, but [00:34:00] the set at which I had pupillage, and some of these other sets which made me offers of pupillage, rejected me for mini pupillages less than a year ago. And I've also been rejected for lots of scholarship applications and all sorts of things, and it can get really demoralizing.
And if you're going through that demoralizing phase, where you think, you I'm not sure I'm ever going to be good enough for this career while also comparing yourself with others. I think it can become quite a problem. And so it's much better just to think about what you want to do to make yourself better.
And keep following that because if you do, I think it should eventually come good.
Ellie: Thank you. I mean, that, that is four really, really well structured and really helpful advice focusing on different areas. I actually had, as a kind of final comment, I had no clue about the Chambers website. That's really helpful to think about.
I was looking [00:35:00] at some of them recently and kind of thinking, wow, their, their CVs are kind of unattainable. So it's helpful being able to look at them now with kind of also that in mind. And yeah, I completely agree.
Bertie: Yeah. I mean, most Barristers are exceptionally. Impressive people, that is the, the sad truth, but it might be that you're also exceptionally impressive and you just don't quite notice it because you're encouraged to think that being exceptionally impressive is about lists of achievements, and actually the lists of achievements are just manifestations of the Core qualities that someone has that makes them exceptional and you might already have those qualities and and you might develop them And that's why I would also say keep applying for three years, maybe which can seem like quite a long slog but lots of people get it in their second or third round of applying for pupillage and the the person you are in 2027 might be [00:36:00] exactly what a set wants and so You just have to keep the morale up.
Yeah.
Ellie: Perfect. Thank you so much. And thank you for coming on the podcast.
Bertie: Pleasure. Thanks, Ellie.
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