There's a lot of news around today about a government claim that the professions are increasingly 'reserved for (the children of) the rich
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Nothing in this report surprises me based on what I've seen and heard about after a year at Bar school.
For those reading this who aren't familiar with the training route to become a barrister, you do a law degree (or a one-year postgrad conversion course), then the one-year Bar Vocational Course, then a one-year apprenticeship called a pupillage. Every year, about 1,500 students complete the BVC hoping to join the English Bar. There are, on average, 550 pupillages available each year.
To say the competition is intense is to understate matters. These are already students who have been able to afford a degree (or a degree plus a postgraduate course) plus the £15,000 fees for the BVC. They all have at least 2:i degrees if not Firsts. A very substantial fraction of them are ex-Oxbridge. And then they go into a selection system which is seeking to discard two-thirds of them.
An actual quote from the head of pupillage selection at one leading commercial barristers' chambers: "Being school captain or in the hockey team isn't unusual. The candidates who stick out are the ones who've spent a gap year building orphanages in Nepal."
It's just as bad on the solicitor side of the profession. The observation about unpaid internships is very true. I'm aware of one law firm which is considered generous in only wanting potential candidates to do three months of unpaid placement before considering them for probationary employment. Many want six or nine. In effect, unless you have a private income together with indulgent and supportive parents, you will have a very hard time getting noticed.
The continued failure of the Bar Council to do anything about this makes me really cross. The BVC is unjustifiably expensive: what other one year postgraduate course would charge £15,000? BVC-providers admit far too many students, including a few who have no real prospect of ever practising at the bar.
It's been my observation that while BVC students are diverse in many ways, they are invariably from moneyed backgrounds. And I think this has got worse over the past few decades: Cherie Booth QC has indicated that she would not have gone to the bar if the now existing arrangements were in place then.
I think by the way that the head of pupillage selection you quote was unusual in placing a premium on orphanage building. Anecdotally, what's important to getting interviews is having a good degree from a good university. In the case of top commercial sets, the BCL.
what other one year postgraduate course would charge £15,000?
Most of them range from £8,000 - £22,000. It mostly depends on where you go. The exception is probably teaching, and the rare courses that have subsidy.
I stand corrected, although I'd still be interested to know how the BVC compares with other courses for student:staff ratios and contact time. Compared to other courses I've done, it seems like spectacularly bad value for money, but maybe I'm spoiled.
The BVC is a cash cow pure and simple - since is all that stands between you and alleged untold riches. Not so true of an MSc in Mythopeic Poetry for example - hence premium fee. Naturally the Bar refuses to admit only as many as it could conceivably employ :-)
FWIW I disagree to a fair extent with M_C as to solicitors as opposed to barristers - they are far more diverse, at least if you get outside of London City commercial firms - a whole world out there, honest :-) Diversity is unsurprising - look at any LLB corpus outside Oxbridge and what you'll overwhelmingly see is bright women, often Indian or Chinese-British. Plus a fair number of matures who have come through access of widening participation. The Bar remains obviously privileged partly because it is deeply scarey to most who don't already have contact with that world; partly because of the financial hurdles outlined above; and part because like then go on to employ like; and crucially, because it is not, at least for many, *employment* - but self employment; and most people who aren't from wealthy/supportive backgrounds simply don't want that degree of risk (especially women who might eventually seek career breaks etc) - I didn't when I qualified and I'm as middle class as all get out - but not upper-upper middle class.
Diversity is unsurprising - look at any LLB corpus outside Oxbridge and what you'll overwhelmingly see is bright women, often Indian or Chinese-British.
Oh, I know lots of women and ethic minority barristers. Over half of pupillages now go to women, for instance. They're just all rich.
Yeh I know I wasn't being very clear. Ethnic bright women going on to become solicitors tend to be rather nmre normally middle class - even occasionally shock horror working class. I know - I've taught them.
By the way, I noticed that we've posted opposing comments about the existence or otherwise of unpaid internships among solicitors' firms. I'm not sure why that is. I've never done such an internship myself, but the people I know who have were all paid for it, and they weren't anywhere near three months long. They were all with city firms though. Perhaps you're talking about smaller local practices?
From the evidence I've seen, internships tend to be with medium-size firms rather than, say, the Magic Circle. Such places are saturated with applications for paralegal employment from students who haven't managed to secure a good training contract, on the basis that experience as a paralegal can both be a good CV point of itself and can also lead to a training contract with the firm in question. The unpaid internship seems to have become a selection filter, as well as a way of getting paralegal work done even more cheaply.
I'm rather surprised at this too as I've been told repeatedly that asking trainee solicitors or would be trainees to work for you for free (or even pay for the privilege)is actually illegal/unethical conduct which can be reported. Yes there are summer placements - is that what you mean? - but in their nature they're limited.
If you mean specifically access to *paralegal* work, that is different - it is much less regulated. But pre this particular recession, most would be solicitors who were any good would, eventually, get a traineeship if willing to travel and work at it and therefore not need to be trapped into unpaid paralegal work. In Scotland certainly most paralegals used to be people like ex policemen, or those who couldn't get the LLB, not would be trainees - that was very unusual. Of course you might well get paid loads more as a London paralegal than a Dundee trainee. But that's choices and i have relatively little sympathy for people who can only contemplate a career,even at its very start, in the very richest corner of the SE tip of thre profession. (I was eg more than irritated to be told at the judges' dinner party couple weeks ago that despite the recession, trainees in one London commercial firm were still starting at more than I get now as a Professor after twenty years in the business. If those are the spoils, well look, there's the competition you have to beat - up to you if you want to play that game.
Members of our pupillage committee tell me they've all spent a gap year building orphanages in Nepal.
We had a couple of hundred applications, the majority of them stellar on paper (academically mostly straight As, and a 1st). We took about 30, I think, for 1st round, (and 10 for second). How are we supposed to make that first cut? We used to have only one round: having short first round interviews is an attempt to find out more than the cv tells us.
We are offering "up to 2" places.
As you (M_C) doubtless are well aware, the costs of training for the bar, particularly if you don't have a law degree, are approaching the prohibitive.
As for sols, I believe its carnage out there at the moment.
I've now had seven first-round interviews, with a variety of approaches. Some sets have given me a legal problem to think about for ten minutes and then grilled me on it; others have thrown me instant-advocacy fast balls. One emailed me a judgment for me to summarise and comment on within a set time period. Several have asked really obvious questions arising from my rather non-standard background, whilst others have hardly talked about my previous experience at all.
What I will say is that in each case I felt I was getting the full and focussed attention of the interview panel, be it comprised of two, three or in one case seven barristers. I've heard horror stories of sets that seem to be going through the motions of interviewing (leading one to dark suspicions that they are trying to disguise this sort of thing) but I've encountered nothing like that. I've always thanked the interview panel for their time because given the number of applications to sift and candidates to interview - even after a ruthless cull - is a long and wearing task.
For those reading this who aren't familiar with the training route to become a barrister, you do a law degree (or a one-year postgrad conversion course), then the one-year Bar Vocational Course, then a one-year apprenticeship called a pupillage. Every year, about 1,500 students complete the BVC hoping to join the English Bar. There are, on average, 550 pupillages available each year.
To say the competition is intense is to understate matters. These are already students who have been able to afford a degree (or a degree plus a postgraduate course) plus the £15,000 fees for the BVC. They all have at least 2:i degrees if not Firsts. A very substantial fraction of them are ex-Oxbridge. And then they go into a selection system which is seeking to discard two-thirds of them.
An actual quote from the head of pupillage selection at one leading commercial barristers' chambers: "Being school captain or in the hockey team isn't unusual. The candidates who stick out are the ones who've spent a gap year building orphanages in Nepal."
It's just as bad on the solicitor side of the profession. The observation about unpaid internships is very true. I'm aware of one law firm which is considered generous in only wanting potential candidates to do three months of unpaid placement before considering them for probationary employment. Many want six or nine. In effect, unless you have a private income together with indulgent and supportive parents, you will have a very hard time getting noticed.
Reply
It's been my observation that while BVC students are diverse in many ways, they are invariably from moneyed backgrounds. And I think this has got worse over the past few decades: Cherie Booth QC has indicated that she would not have gone to the bar if the now existing arrangements were in place then.
I think by the way that the head of pupillage selection you quote was unusual in placing a premium on orphanage building. Anecdotally, what's important to getting interviews is having a good degree from a good university. In the case of top commercial sets, the BCL.
Reply
Most of them range from £8,000 - £22,000. It mostly depends on where you go. The exception is probably teaching, and the rare courses that have subsidy.
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FWIW I disagree to a fair extent with M_C as to solicitors as opposed to barristers - they are far more diverse, at least if you get outside of London City commercial firms - a whole world out there, honest :-) Diversity is unsurprising - look at any LLB corpus outside Oxbridge and what you'll overwhelmingly see is bright women, often Indian or Chinese-British. Plus a fair number of matures who have come through access of widening participation. The Bar remains obviously privileged partly because it is deeply scarey to most who don't already have contact with that world; partly because of the financial hurdles outlined above; and part because like then go on to employ like; and crucially, because it is not, at least for many, *employment* - but self employment; and most people who aren't from wealthy/supportive backgrounds simply don't want that degree of risk (especially women who might eventually seek career breaks etc) - I didn't when I qualified and I'm as middle class as all get out - but not upper-upper middle class.
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Oh, I know lots of women and ethic minority barristers. Over half of pupillages now go to women, for instance. They're just all rich.
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If you mean specifically access to *paralegal* work, that is different - it is much less regulated. But pre this particular recession, most would be solicitors who were any good would, eventually, get a traineeship if willing to travel and work at it and therefore not need to be trapped into unpaid paralegal work. In Scotland certainly most paralegals used to be people like ex policemen, or those who couldn't get the LLB, not would be trainees - that was very unusual. Of course you might well get paid loads more as a London paralegal than a Dundee trainee. But that's choices and i have relatively little sympathy for people who can only contemplate a career,even at its very start, in the very richest corner of the SE tip of thre profession. (I was eg more than irritated to be told at the judges' dinner party couple weeks ago that despite the recession, trainees in one London commercial firm were still starting at more than I get now as a Professor after twenty years in the business. If those are the spoils, well look, there's the competition you have to beat - up to you if you want to play that game.
Reply
We had a couple of hundred applications, the majority of them stellar on paper (academically mostly straight As, and a 1st). We took about 30, I think, for 1st round, (and 10 for second). How are we supposed to make that first cut? We used to have only one round: having short first round interviews is an attempt to find out more than the cv tells us.
We are offering "up to 2" places.
As you (M_C) doubtless are well aware, the costs of training for the bar, particularly if you don't have a law degree, are approaching the prohibitive.
As for sols, I believe its carnage out there at the moment.
Reply
What I will say is that in each case I felt I was getting the full and focussed attention of the interview panel, be it comprised of two, three or in one case seven barristers. I've heard horror stories of sets that seem to be going through the motions of interviewing (leading one to dark suspicions that they are trying to disguise this sort of thing) but I've encountered nothing like that. I've always thanked the interview panel for their time because given the number of applications to sift and candidates to interview - even after a ruthless cull - is a long and wearing task.
Reply
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