Pupillage Vacancy Information
Our award of £75,000 may be advanced during the BPTC year at the pupillage committee’s discretion. Quadrant Chambers pays for any compulsory course that pupils are required to undertake.
You also have the opportunity to take on some fee-earning work during the final six months of the pupillage, the earnings of which can be retained on top of the pupillage award. While it isn’t possible for us to predict what you can earn during this period, in recent years pupils have earned an average of £10,000 and one as much as £22,450.
The Inns of Court all offer scholarships to help students fund their GDL and BPTC years.
You will also be assigned a pastoral mentor throughout your pupillage.
Equality Diversity and Inclusion
At Quadrant Chambers, we take as our starting point that there is a lot of work to do to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion in our Chambers, the Commercial and Chancery Bars, and the Bar more generally. As a Chambers, we are committed to doing as much of that work as we can, both inwardly to continue to improve on the strides that we are making within Quadrant to increase diversity and inclusion and externally, on a much broader scale, across the Bar.
In this respect, we view diversity as wide ranging and intersectional, including neurodiversity, diversity of race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, sex, gender (identity and expression), socio-economic background, sexuality, religion or belief, disability, and marital or civil partnership status. For us, a diverse Bar is critical to the integrity of the justice system that is, in principle, designed to serve the entirety of society. We also believe unequivocally in the inherent fairness of treating all people equally and ensuring that they are given an effective opportunity to access the profession, and when within the profession, the support required to develop thriving practices from within our Chambers and more generally across the Bar.
Chambers and our conference rooms are fully accessible.
More details are available here: https://www.quadrantchambers.com/equality-diversity-and-inclusion
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 questions from Chambers:
Why do you think you will be a successful commercial barrister? (200 words max)
What are your strengths and weaknesses as an advocate or communicator? (200 words max)
Tell us about a time when you failed to meet your, or someone else’s, expectations. How did you respond? What do you do differently now as a result? (250 words max)
Identify two reasons in support of and two reasons against the following proposition: a well-constructed system for the taxation of personal and corporation tax should deliberately contain gaps, loopholes, and ambiguities that allow taxpayers to engage in tax avoidance when effectively used. (250 words max)
Why should we choose you? (40 words max)
About AETO and Structure of Pupillage
Quadrant Chambers holds a pre-eminent position as one of the leading international commercial disputes sets. We are market leaders with a reputation for excellence in our main areas of focus: aviation, banking, commercial disputes, commodities, energy, insurance, international arbitration and shipping.
We award pupillages to candidates who we believe will thrive in the intellectually demanding and competitive world of the Commercial Bar. A Quadrant barrister possesses excellent analytical abilities; outstanding communication skills, both written and oral; the ability to perform under pressure and, perhaps most importantly, ambition and drive to succeed.
We measure these qualities via assessment of your application, your academic records, extra-curricular activities and mooting performance. Shortlisted candidates will also be invited to interview.
A pupil supervisor will oversee your training, monitor your work and answer any queries you may have during pupillage. You are assigned four successive supervisors over the course of the pupillage. We aim to place you with barristers with a range of practices so you can experience a wide variety of work.
We run a series of introductory lectures during the first few weeks of your pupillage on key areas of law and practice. You can then expect to spend time drafting opinions, pleadings and skeleton arguments, assisting with legal research tasks and producing a monthly digest of important cases.
Pupils also have the opportunity to shadow their pupil supervisor at hearings and conferences.
More details are available here: https://www.quadrantchambers.com/pupillage
