Tag Archives: pupillage

Off Piste

I’ve been trying to get to that insightful post about the Government’s response to the Family Justice Review. I’ve been slowly reading through the doc – ooh look, a bunny! A new TV drama! A blog post featuring entertaining troll rantiness threads. You know how it goes. There is a lot of stuff out there to distract me from the task in hand.

Yesterday’s distraction was (amongst other things, such as being mildly hung over, walking through some sparklingly crunchy icy fields in warm warm sunlight with my best friend and her lab, intervening between siblings to avoid rear seat mcdonalds balloon fight induced motorway catastrophe, and helping out my dad with his new “tech” (PEBCAK)) a blog post about pupillage. Not a topic I have dwelt on much on PT, but this irked me sufficiently to prompt a sort of response, which I am now about to type. *Inhale*

The title of the blog post induced a raised eyebrow and some mild snorting, which I think is generally the reaction aimed for on Legal Cheek: “Time for the bar to put their hands in their pockets”. In truth I probably should have sewn my fists into my jeans, because now they are loose I am careering towards a rant and my fingers are dancing on the keys.

I was a pupil once. But whilst I may have been a bit chippy about the added difficulties faced by non-oxbridge graduates without a trust fund to see them through I never once thought that the solution was to create more pupillages just so everyone could have a bash. I was lucky enough to get a pupillage, but I still almost ended up £20k in debt with no tenancy. There was a lot about the system that I thought was rather unfair, many odds stacked high against me, looming alarmingly and ready to topple on my head. I remember the awfulness of the wait for the pupillage offer, and later the tenancy, decision. I remember how utterly crap, nail biting and financially petrifying it was not to get a tenancy, and having to go through the whole process again with a third six. You see, I was unfortunate enough to do a pupillage at a set which, through circumstances unforeseen at the time of the offer of pupillage, had insufficient work to take me on at the end.  Continue Reading…

Advertising Bar

I noticed the full page advert on the front inside cover of last month’s counsel magazine and raised an eyebrow. It was a ‘desperately seeking pupillage’ advert from an individual. Determined, I thought. Creative. And pretty cringeworthy. But the boundless entertainment that Counsel provides no doubt drew me onwards and I passed over it without much more thought.

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But it seems it has caused the raising of more important eyebrows than mine because a whole page is devoted to this little whoopsy in this month’s Counsel. The Bar Standards Board has issued a statement about why such adverts are ‘out of line’ with the BSB’s pupillage advertising requirements’ on equal opportunities grounds. I take their point which is made also in a lengthy letter from a disgruntled pupillage seeker (who has rather ironically managed by dint of this letter’s publication to demonstrate his own articulacy and dogged determination and hence obtain a free advert for his own suitability for an offer of pupillage) – all pupillages must be advertised and all applications must go through the advertised route.

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But what I really want to know is how on earth this one slipped through the net? In fact I know how this slipped through the net, although the Editorial Board of Counsel is made up of members of the Bar, no doubt advertising and the revenue generated from it are very much the domain of Lexis, the commercial enterprise who are contracted to publish this magazine and to make it viable and presumably profitable. No doubt questions of the regulation of pupillages were not at the forefront of the advertising bods at Lexis.

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So what I really really want to know is – for the facilitating the public destruction of this young man’s self-respect by the publication of the advert in the first place, and no doubt for further reducing his prospects of securing a pupillage via the publication of the BSB statement and associated letter (which at least insinuates that he has improperly attempted to gain an advantage over his fellow pupillage seekers) – how much did Counsel magazine charge?

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It may have been naive or unjustifiably optimistic to think such an advert would miraculously produce results (okay it was definitely naive and over-optimistic), but he should never have been allowed to put himself in this position by the Bar’s own magazine. I hope Counsel magazine has apologised to the poor bloke and refunded his money.