Pupillage Vacancy Information
Why 11KBW?
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. Members of Chambers regularly appear in the most important, interesting, and high-profile cases of the day in our core practice areas of employment, public, commercial, and data, information and media law. Our excellence across our practice areas has been recognised at the recent Chambers & Partners Bar Awards, at which we were adjudged overall ‘Set of the Year’.
As a pupil, you will have the opportunity to work on cases with some of the leading practitioners at the English Bar.
We are committed to equality and diversity and strongly encourage applications for pupillage from members of groups which are under-represented at the Bar. Our ethos can be summarised as a commitment to outstanding advocacy and intellectual rigour, combined with a friendly and inclusive working culture. We believe in providing our pupils with a rewarding, challenging and supportive environment which will prepare candidates of the very highest calibre for an exceptional and enjoyable career at the Bar.
We are proud of our unparalleled record of members becoming some of the most distinguished members of the judiciary. We are proud that three of the senior judicial appointments from Chambers are women; and that Mr Justice Choudhury is the first British High Court Judge of Bangladeshi origin.
Pupillage at 11KBW
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.
For more information and watch videos about Pupillage please click here.
Guide for Applicants
Stage 1: Pupillage Gateway Applications
All applications through the Pupillage Gateway will be assessed by a sub-group of the Pupillage and Tenancy Committee in order to determine whether the application will progress to the next stage, or be rejected.
The criteria that are applied are as follows:
- Intellectual ability (weighting x 3)
- Written advocacy (weighting x 2)
- Oral advocacy (weighting x 1)
Oral advocacy has a lower weighting not because we place less weight upon it overall, but because we are less able to assess this at this stage.
Each criterion is marked 1-4 (including half marks), where 1 is low and 4 is high. If an application does not score at least 1 for ‘intellectual ability’, then we will not further assess the application and it will be rejected.
The onus is on applicants to show by evidence that they satisfy each criterion.
Intellectual ability
Applicants who have completed their first degree are expected to have obtained a high 2:1 degree in any subject, unless they can demonstrate exceptional mitigating circumstances, or unless they can demonstrate that they have evidence of later high academic achievement (for example, a merit or above at Masters level, or a distinction on the CPE).
In order to determine whether a 2:1 is “high” or not, we will need to know individual finals scores. It is up to applicants to supply them (or to explain why they cannot).
Generally speaking, we cannot place weight on “predicted” results. However, where applicants have not completed their first degree, we will look at individual results so far achieved, as well as A-level (or equivalent) results and predicted results.
If an applicant relies upon extenuating circumstances, both the circumstances, and the link to any particular results, should be explained clearly.
If the results are from a non-UK institution, applicants should explain where the results place them in the system of education of which the institution forms part.
Written advocacy
We have added a specific question to the application form to address this criterion. Our assessment will be based upon the answer to this question. This is deliberate and the best candidates will demonstrate that they can answer persuasively.
We will consider in particular clarity, concision, and persuasiveness.
Please do not use AI tooling (e.g. ChatGPT, etc.) to assist with the answer to this (or any other) question. Any candidate identified as having used such tooling will not be assessed further.
Oral advocacy
We have added a specific question to the application form to address this issue and our assessment will be based primarily upon the answer to this question, but we will look at all relevant evidence within the application.
How to Apply
Please apply through the Pupillage Gateway. Alongside the Bar Council standard questionnaire you will be ask the following questions:
- Why do you believe you will make a good barrister? (Maximum word-count 500)
- Why do you want to join our chambers? (Maximum word-count 500)
- Is it wrong for political candidates to seek celebrity endorsements? (Maximum word-count 500)
- Please describe a single example of your skilful 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. (Maximum word-count 200)
