Pupillage and Dealing with the Frustration of Rejection

Always look on the bright side of life.....

Always look on the bright side of life.....

After logging onto the ‘Pupillage Portal’, I am confronted with yet another rejection.  This time the posted thumbs down is from a set of chambers with whom I conducted a very successful mini-pupillage.  The R button has been well and truly depressed and not even an interview or even a courtesy email are upon the horizon!

Given the hard work of many an evening pooling thoughts to strike life into this marathon online application, I think it is important to strike a return ball back to chambers and seek their thoughts as to why these online submissions are unsuccessful. Indeed, to explore what it was that my application lacked and furthermore, what focus I need to apply to gain a somewhat more than fanciful opportunity to get before the interview panel!

Or is the answer just staring my in the face? Why of course, perhaps I should have gone to Cambridge, obtained a first class degree and an accompanied LLM, taken up the piano and the Cambridge Footlights, acquired a taste for Gilbert and Sullivan and applied to become a barrister fifteen years earlier).  Silly me, what was I thinking?

So I look upon my last small number of online applications upon the ‘Portal’ and wonder whether as has happened on previous occasions that they just might be the forgotten ones, especially as pupillage offers start to role in after 9.30am on 30th July. Watch this space for further developments!

Now to more positive thoughts, it has been great to see more Twitter followers of this blog and those injecting their PC’s with the RSS feed. Many thanks and may you continue to enjoy the Pupillage Blog.

As always,
Justin Time

2 comments to Pupillage and Dealing with the Frustration of Rejection

  • phatboy

    Out of interest, are you applying to criminal or civil sets?

    My pupillage applications were terrible. Mostly, my apps just got ignored. A few chambers gave me interviews, I suspect more because they recognised a correlation between my name and that of a local firm rather than because they thought I was any good.

    One set offered me a second six and I accepted, although I never found a first six and never heard from them about it again!!

    I only ever studied the Bar because I wanted to be a lawyer and wasn’t bothered whether it was a solicitor or barrister. I took the Bar bcause switching from that to being a solicitor is very easy and I can count my seniority from Call rather than qualification!

    I did a 6 month training contract after the Law Society kindly exempted me from the other 18 months and got my higher rights 6 months after being admitted.

    Personally, I’d recommend becoming an HCA, you get a salary and a percentage of the brief fees so you can get the best of both worlds.

    There is one other method you could use for pupillage, worked for me but I turned it down because I was still quite stupid at the time. I did one of the training the trainer sessions offered by Middle. Presumably I did a good job in my cross-exam because I got a round of applause from the watching Silks, one commented that he couldn’t have done better and another took me to lunch and offered me pupillage in his Chambers in Manchester! Being a London boy and having a girlfriend here I turned him down. Do not underestimate the power of good networking away from work where you’re joining in with something that the top bods want to do and actually helping them!!

    If you’re really dedicated to the Bar then good luck to you.

  • Anon1

    Dear Phatboy,

    Thank you for your contribution above.

    How did you get an exemption from the SRA for 18 months, after only doing 6 months of TC.

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>