Pupillage Vacancy Information
About Authorised Education and Training Organisation and Structure of Pupillage
Leading commercial chancery set XXIV Old Buildings comprises 48 barristers (including 11 KCs) whose rich and diverse practices are united by a specialisation in chancery and commercial work, and membership of a friendly and forward-thinking chambers supported by a dynamic practice management team.
XXIV Old Buildings is renowned for the breadth and depth of expertise of its members, whom Chambers & Partners recognise as having been “involved in some of the most significant commercial cases going through the chancery division in recent years.” In recent years, Chambers and Partners awarded our former head of chambers, Alan Steinfeld KC, its coveted lifetime achievement award, chambers has been named “Chancery Set of the Year”, and Bajul Shah has been named “Chancery Junior of the Year”. Our barristers are regularly instructed in cases that go from the courtroom to the textbook – from Foskett v McKeown, Choithram v Pagarani and Schmidt v Rosewood, to Rubin v Eurofinance, Patel v Mirza and Wood v Capita.
We are distinguished by our unrivalled reputation for international and cross-border litigation, an area in which we are recognised as “pioneers in the field”. As well as appearing in courts and tribunals at every level in England and Wales, members of chambers frequently appear as advocates, offer advice, act as arbitrators and work alongside other lawyers in jurisdictions around the world, including the USA, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Mauritius, Malaysia, Gibraltar, China (including Hong Kong), Kazakhstan, Singapore, and Samoa.
Today’s pupils are tomorrow’s tenants and the future of chambers. We therefore pride ourselves on our fair and rigorous application process, which we believe our applicants deserve and appreciate. We do not invite or process applications using the Pupillage Gateway application platform, and do not believe you should be limited in the number of sets to which you can apply. Instead we have developed and manage our own application process – inviting applications using our own simple online form available at www.xxiv.co.uk/pupillage – to take account of the fact that pupillage applications are time-consuming and that applicants are likely to have other academic and work commitments. We believe that our system allows us to select the best candidates for pupillage, irrespective of background.
We look for candidates with strong academic qualifications (a first or 2:1 class degree, not necessarily in law, although we consider lower class degrees if you suffered mitigating circumstances), intellectual ability, sound common sense and judgment and enthusiasm for the type of work in which we specialise. We aim to identify potential to become great advocates and successful tenants in our chambers. We take account of high grades in post-graduate law qualifications if they are relevant to our area of practice.
We take particular pride in our transparent, fair, rigorous, and friendly application process.
As well as aiming to recruit the best applicants, we invest heavily in our pupils’ time with us – and their training – to build on our ongoing success. We think that we can offer you one of the most enjoyable, well-structured and generously funded pupillages at the Bar – and we hope those who apply successfully will agree.
We are offering up to one pupillage from October 2025 (each with an award of £85,000), and our clear aim will be to offer tenancy to all pupils in due course.
Financial and Other Support Available
Our pupillage award is £85,000, supplemented by earnings in the practising period of pupillage.
£55,000 is paid as a scholarship during the non-practising period of pupillage, although half of it may be drawn down in advance.
The remaining £30,000 is paid during the practising period, and is supplemented by amounts that pupils earn in their own right during that period.
Equality Diversity and Inclusion
We take particular pride in our transparent, fair, rigorous, and friendly application process.
We operate an equal opportunities policy and recruit without regard to race, colour, ethnic or national origin, nationality, citizenship, sex, gender re-assignment, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, religion or belief, fertility health, pregnancy, or maternity. For this reason, to the extent practically feasible, we operate a ‘name-blind’ recruitment process, and have been pioneers in offering funded mini-pupillages.
Beyond this, our members and our organisation carry out and take part in a wide range of initiatives to try to promote the accessibility of careers at the Bar to all, regardless of background or protected characteristics. In the past year, these have included the 10,000 Black Interns initiative, the Pegasus Access and Support Scheme (PASS), the COMBAR
Social Mobility Mentoring Scheme, the Sutton Trust’s Bar Placement Week and much else, as well as attending and speaking at events at schools and other educational institutions around the country. We are also a signatory to the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance pledge to take a more environmentally-friendly approach to recruitment. If you have any questions about accessibility and XXIV Old Buildings, please contact our Pupillage Co-ordinator, Erin Hitchens, (at pupillage@xxiv.co.uk) with any questions about the accessibility of XXIV Old Buildings.
How to Apply
XXIV Old Buildings conducts its own bespoke application process for pupillage. Full details, including the selection policy, are available in the Pupillage and Recruitment Policy on our website at www.xxiv.co.uk/pupillage.
We do not think that you should be limited in the number of sets to which you can apply, and by developing and managing our own application process – which takes account of the fact that pupillage applications are time-consuming and that applicants are likely to have other academic and work commitments – we believe we have formulated a rigorous and fair system that allows us to select the best candidates for pupillage, irrespective of background. Our carefully-designed pathway, from application to offer, is part of our commitment to equality and diversity at the Bar.
We therefore invite applications between 11.00am on Thursday 2 January 2025 and 11.59pm on Thursday 6 February 2025 (i.e. in accordance with the Pupillage Gateway timetable) using our own (genuinely short, and, we hope, genuinely user-friendly and straightforward) bespoke online form, available at www.xxiv.co.uk/pupillage. N.B. We do not use the Pupillage Gateway application platform to process or administer our applications.
Following 11.59pm on Thursday 6 February 2025:
1. We will assess and score the application forms based upon our stated criteria. The 40 candidates with the highest scores will be invited to interview. If you are invited to interview we may ask you to send a CV and covering letter to chambers a couple of days before your interview (such that it may make sense to prepare these in advance).
2. The interviews will be in a structured format. We will endeavour to conduct them in chambers in the week commencing 10 February 2025.
3. The 12 candidates who perform best at interview will be invited to the final round selection day. This will take place in chambers or nearby and we anticipate that it will involve you being invited to prepare for and take part in (i) an advocacy exercise, (ii) a group discussion exercise, and (iii) an unseen written exercise. You will also have some talks from our tenants about our chambers and our work. The day is likely to last from about 9.30am until about 5pm and our intention is for it to take place on 15 February 2025. We suggest that you ensure, before you apply, that you can come to London for the whole of that day. The aim of the day is not only for us to evaluate your potential as pupils and tenants of chambers, but also to give you an opportunity to learn more about us and our work.
4. Offers of pupillage will be made at 9.30am on Friday 9 May 2025 (i.e. in accordance with the Pupillage Gateway timetable).
If you have any questions or concerns about our pupillage application process, please contact our Pupillage Co-ordinator, Erin Hitchens by email at pupillage@xxiv.co.uk. You can also follow us on X (@XXIVpupillage) for further updates.
For full details of our application process, and pupillage at XXIV Old Buildings, please visit our website: www.xxiv.co.uk/pupillage.
