Pupillage Vacancy Information
£75,000 pupillage award with up to £20,000 of the pupillage award may be paid to prospective pupils as an advance in their BPTC year.
Equality Diversity and Inclusion
11KBW is committed to equality and diversity. Our aim is to get the very best practitioners. We welcome applications from talented people, whatever their backgrounds. We strongly encourage applications for pupillage from members of groups which are under-represented at the Bar.
Our approach to pupil recruitment and pupillage is underpinned by our commitment to equal opportunities and fair treatment. Candidates for pupillage, and work done during pupillage, are assessed strictly on merit against objective criteria. We use the Rare Contextual Recruitment System, which allows us to understand each applicant’s achievements in the context in which they have been gained.
We have an active Equality, Diversity and Social Responsibility Committee, chaired by Jane McCafferty KC, which meets regularly to oversee our diversity and inclusion initiatives. As part of our commitment to improving access to the Bar and to improve diversity within chambers, we recently established the 11KBW Scholarship for Black Students on the BPTC. We also participate in the Bridging the Bar mini-pupillage scheme, the Bar Council’s Bar Placement Scheme (run in conjunction with Pathways to Law and the Social Mobility Foundation), and COMBAR’s mentoring scheme to improve access for under-represented groups at the Commercial Bar.
Reasonable adjustments will be made where appropriate for any disabled candidate for pupillage and for any disabled pupil. If you wish to make a request for reasonable adjustments or have questions about the accessibility of chambers, please email Claire Halas (Claire.Halas@11kbw). Our access statement is available on our website.
Please visit our website to read our equality and diversity and anti-harassment policy statements.
How to Apply
Aspiring barristers are invited to apply to chambers between Wednesday 4 January 2023 and Wednesday 8 February 2023 using the Pupillage Gateway application system to search for the relevant Pupillage Vacancy and selecting ‘Apply for this pupillage’.
In addition to the standardised Bar Council questionnaire, candidates will be asked to respond to the following questions from Chambers:
- Why do you believe you will make a good barrister? (max 1200 characters)
- Why do you want to join our chambers? (max 1200 characters)
- Should ethics codes for MPs be enforceable by the Courts? (max 1200 characters)
- Should emergency workers be prohibited from refusing to work as part of industrial action? (max 2000 characters)
- Please describe a single example of your skillful use of oral advocacy. Your example may be a successful performance in a mooting or debating competition, or an instance from any walk of life (eg a meeting at work or a request for anyone to reconsider a decision) where you have sought to persuade someone else. Please explain how you argued effectively and relate the outcome. (max 1200 characters)
About AETO and Structure of Pupillage
We are a specialist civil law set providing high quality advice and advocacy to a wide range of private and public sector clients, both claimants and defendants.
Pupillage is divided into three parts, each with a different supervisor (or two if they job-share the role).
In the first three months, you will be based almost exclusively with your supervisor, giving you an opportunity to settle in and have an in-depth experience of day to day practice. From month four, you will work with lots of different members of Chambers. This allows you to see the full range of practice areas and enables members of Chambers with different expertise and all levels of seniority to assess your work so we can build up a fair and complete picture before making tenancy decisions.
Our pupils do not practise on their own before the tenancy decision in July, but all of the work you do during pupillage will be on real, often ‘live’, cases. You will draft opinions, skeleton arguments, pleadings and other written pieces.
As well as doing assessed written work, you will have the opportunity to shadow your supervisors and other members of Chambers at hearings and client conferences.
Ongoing feedback
Feedback on your work is ongoing throughout pupillage, both from your supervisors and any other members of Chambers you work with. All significant pieces of work done for your supervisor, and all pieces of work done for members other than your supervisor, are marked against objective criteria such as legal research, analysis, and judgement. Work done for members other than your supervisor is marked by two members of Chambers, both of whom give feedback. Members of Chambers will tell you whether your work met the tenancy standard.
We believe that this ongoing, transparent assessment and feedback from a range of members of Chambers is the fairest way for us to assess your work and enables you and your supervisors to track your progress throughout the year.
We assess oral advocacy skills through the regular feedback sessions you will have to discuss your written work. There are also dedicated advocacy exercises during the year.
We offer pupillage only to individuals whom we believe have the potential to meet the tenancy standard. But we do not expect our pupils to produce work at that standard in the early periods of pupillage. Our aim in giving consistent feedback throughout the year is to enable you to develop all of the skills we assess by the time decisions about tenancy are made.
The tenancy decision
The tenancy decision is taken in July. We are committed to offering tenancy to every pupil whose work is consistently at the tenancy standard by the time of the decision.
This means that pupils are not in competition with one another for offers of tenancy. Everyone is assessed on their own merit.
Where a pupil is taken on after pupillage and becomes a tenant, past experience demonstrates that their first-year earnings will compare favourably to those of their peers at other leading Chambers, and leading City and US law firms. As barristers are self-employed, junior tenants’ earnings do vary depending on their workload and the areas in which they choose to practise.
Our selection process
Chambers has a four-stage process for applications for pupillages commencing in October 2024:
Stage 1 – the Application Form
All applications for pupillage will be reviewed by a sub-group of our Pupillage and Tenancy Committee. Applicants will be expected to have a first or good upper-second class degree (in any academic field), subject to mitigating circumstances. There is a more detailed guide to the written application process on the pupillage section of our website https://www.11kbw.com/join-us/pupillage/.
Stage 2 - Assessed written work
Selected candidates will be invited to undertake a piece of assessed written work, intended to be completed in the second half of March 2023. This piece of work will be completed remotely, unless the circumstances of the applicant/application are such that completing the application in Chambers is preferable, and in a time period which you can select during that window. You will have 48 hours to complete the work once provided with the papers, although the work is not expected to take longer than 12 hours. It will be based on a self-contained set of papers, so you will not be expected to do wider research in order to complete the work. The work will then be assessed by a sub-group of the Pupillage and Tenancy Committee.
Stage 3 – Assessed mini-pupillage day
Following the assessed written work, selected candidates will be invited into Chambers for an oral assessment and mini-pupillage day. This will allow those candidates to spend more time with us and to learn more about what we do and how we work. The oral assessment will be based upon your assessed written work.
We expect this will be in the week commencing 17 April 2023.
Stage 4 – Interview
Selected candidates will be invited for a final round interview in the first week of May 2023.
At each stage, the assessment will be undertaken by the same group to ensure a consistent approach.
We have a new video explaining the Application Process to watch please click here.
Offers of pupillage
Offers to successful candidates will be made through the Gateway in May 2023.
Expenses
We recognise that attendance at Chambers for the mini-pupillage day and for interview may be expensive for applicants who are not based in London, and who may have to pay for their travel and/or accommodation. We will reimburse the reasonable travel or accommodation expenses of applicants who reach these stages and live outside the M25. For further information please contact our Admin Team; AdminRoom@11kbw.com
Reasonable adjustments
Reasonable adjustments will be made where appropriate for any disabled candidate for pupillage, and for any disabled pupil. Any candidate requiring reasonable adjustments should email Adminroom@11kbw.com, providing details of their needs and the adjustment they seek.
For more information please visit our website: https://www.11kbw.com/join-us/pupillage/
