Pupillage Vacancy Information
Pupils are offered generous funding and will experience a wide variety of court and paperwork. There is also the opportunity to work closely with silks on complex and sometimes high-profile cases.
We offer an award of £55,000, plus £10,000 guaranteed earnings during your second six. There is a draw down facility of up to £15,000 which can be applied for on acceptance of an offer of pupillage from us, subject to references.
On successful application for membership to Chambers on completion of your pupillage, we also provide a contribution free income threshold at the beginning of tenancy. In the last 3 years, 5 of our 6 pupils have joined as members.
Equality Diversity and Inclusion
Old Square Chambers is committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Bar and within Chambers. It is embedded in our practice areas, strategy and our day to day operations.
Chambers participates in a number of schemes to support access to the Bar as a profession. This includes the 10,000 Black Interns Scheme and various schemes run by the Inns to combat social mobility challenges. We ensure all of our selection processes for advertised work experience, mini pupillage and recruitment vacancies are processed in line with Fair Recruitment Guidelines, including anonymisation of forms at shortlisting stage.
We have an active Equality, Diversity and Wellbeing Committee. Recent outputs include guaranteed earnings for third six pupils, anti racism training and further enhancement of our fair allocation of work monitoring.
More broadly, many of our members undertake pro bono work on a regular basis (indeed, several times in the last few years our members have won the Pro Bono Barrister of the Year award), and participate in a number of schemes that support access to justice. We also support the Support Through Court scheme run by the Guardians Network.
In terms of Pupillage, we have all relevant policies in place, wellbeing checks and representatives, and a strong support structure to ensure our pupils have everything they need for what is inevitably a challenging and anxious year.
If you wish to discuss any matters relating to the application process, or Chambers more broadly, please contact our Chambers Director, Sarah Earl, at searl@oldsquare.co.uk in confidence. You can also speak with her regarding any accessibility or reasonable adjustment needs.
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 wish to become a barrister? (1,200 character limit)
- What areas of practice are you interested in and why? (1,200 character limit)
- Why do you believe you will make a good barrister? (1,200 character limit)
- Please identify any additional experiences/skills gained that you believe may help you in your career. (1,200 character limit)
- Why are you applying to Old Square Chambers specifically? (1,200 character limit)
- Tell us about an appellate decision in one of our practice areas that you disagree with and why. (1,300 character limit)
About AETO and Structure of Pupillage
The defining quality of Old Square Chambers is excellence. This is the standard we set for ourselves in the delivery of services to our clients, and the criterion by which we assess prospective tenants and pupils. Members regularly appear before the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, in leading cases at the forefront of UK law. Chambers was recently recognised as the Chambers of the Year whilst members were awarded the Employment Junior and Personal Injury Junior of the Year awards. Many of our members are recognised as leading juniors in their field whilst others hold part-time judicial positions, sit on specialist panels, act as mediators, and edit or contribute to leading practitioner texts. Our objective is to select a small number of pupils with the aim of recruiting our tenants from them. We have a strong retention rate and encourage pupils to be collaborative. Chambers is committed to equality and diversity, and we are proud to have a diverse membership which we continue to build upon. We actively engage in several access to the Bar initiatives. We are committed to ensuring all our recruitment and selection processes are fair and that protected characteristics are safeguarded. We are based in Bedford Row but operate nationally.
We are a leading employment and personal injury/civil set of chambers. Our work is balanced between claimant and defendant or respondent and includes the protection of individual rights. We work on behalf of trade unions, commercial organisations, the NHS and local and central government. In employment we cover all the relevant areas including discrimination, collective action, individual rights, restraint of trade and human rights. We also have a thriving practice in the field of professional regulatory and disciplinary work, especially in the healthcare sector, with members often appearing on behalf of high-profile doctors (such as the British Cycling and Team Sky Doctor) and in the High Court seeking injunctive relief. In personal injury we have an excellent profile spanning all types of litigation. Particular areas of strength include catastrophic injury, disaster and multi-party litigation. In clinical law we have a number of expert practitioners encompassing all disputes affecting and involving the medical, dental, pharmaceutical and nursing professions.
Our members have worked on most of the high profile inquests and inquiries over the last three decades, most recently including the Grenfell Inquiry, the Paterson Inquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, the Infected Blood Inquiry and inquests into the London Bridge and Westminster terrorist attacks.
Much of our work involves the use of European jurisprudence.
We assess prospective pupils on a number of criteria, details of which can be found on our website.
Any Other Relevant Information
In the event that your studies have been affected adversely by life events or challenges, please do ensure that, if you feel comfortable doing so, you share this information in your application. All applications are treated in the strictest of confidence.
