Inns of Court Scholarships 2017

Hey guys, this is a thread to discuss 2017 scholarship applications. I would be grateful for any advice anybody may have in relation to this. Sophie

You are receiving this email as we have noted that you have confirmed your attendance at your March BPTC scholarship interview. Please don’t confirm you’ve received this confirmation of your confirmation of interview as at a certain point the word confirmation is simply used too many times in one sentence.

be concise

Hi all!

Does anyone know about chances at re-applying to a given Inn for a scholarship? I was rejected by an Inn following an interview a few years back and I'm wondering whether it's worth reapplying to the same Inn?

Does anyone know if Inner base their scholarship decision purely on the interview? Or is the paper application and references a factor too?

Yesterday many of my friends got rejection letters. Has anyone received good news yet.I have not gotten anything yet, so I'm hopeful but very nervous.

Hi I received my scholarship from Inner yesterday. Hope it goes well for you!

Yesterday many of my friends got rejection letters. Has anyone received good news yet.I have not gotten anything yet, so I'm hopeful but very nervous.

I woke up this morning remembering that I had never responded to this thread as promised. Weird.

P.S. What follows is a very long-winded account of the scholarship application process, from choosing an Inn to accepting the award. I accept no responsibility for any ennui or malaise caused by reading on.

I applied for and got a (big) scholarship/exhibition/award at Inner. They are means-tested (at least partially) so that was the reason it was large, not because I was any good. But I like to think I reached a certain standard in order to be offered it.

I applied to Inner because of aforementioned means-testing, also because they interview everybody and I like to think I do well at interviews. I also like the tradition etc. of the temple area and having a nice garden on the Thames, but whatever. I was very impressed with the support offered by the education department on a visit day. They were also the first inn to call a woman barrister and are committed to promoting equality and diversity, so that could be another good reason to apply.

Inner requires three referees (the others only two?) but gives you longer to get the references to them (they must be sent direct). In reality, if the references aren't received in November, they let you know by email around the start of February and you have a week to get them in. I'm sure the deadline for the form is applied strictly though, so don't be caught out.

The form doesn't appear to be hugely significant, given that they interview everybody. On reflection, at my interview, having now attacked millions of pupillage forms, I thought my form was quite weak. I do have plenty on my CV though, minis, work exp, marshalling, legal advice clinic, mooting, but it was just badly presented - didn't cost me in the end luckily - so don't stress too much about the form(?)

The interviews took place on two consecutive Saturdays at the start of March. The team were amenable to requests for one day or the other, and tried to put candidates travelling from outside London later on in the day. A particular highlight of the process were these sentences in an email: It shows that you're dealing with real humans, I guess, which is comforting.

The interview lasted about 45 minutes in total. I arrived probably 15 minutes early (not including about 40 minutes sat in Starbucks up the road) so the whole hugely-anticipated process lasted about an hour and was totally pain-free. When you arrive, you wait some more (in the sun - yay) and 30 minutes before your interview 12ish of you are taken through to the library where you choose a recent unpublished case to read for 30 minutes. You have a choice of crime, family or civil. I chose crime, as I had studied that most recently. I had been studying French law at this time which gives very short judgments (1-2 pages!) so I had slightly forgotten that a whole judgment is actually quite a big thing to read thoroughly, take notes on, and prepare stuff to talk about in 30 minutes. It was an appeal against conviction, there were two grounds and one of them had been omitted in any case, so it wasn't even a entire judgment.

The questions (which were provided at the outset) were: What was the case about? What was the key legal question? What were the parties' arguments? What was the Court's decision and what were its reasons? This are fairly standard questions for structuring a case commentary (again, French law does a lot of these, so I was prepared - less common in the UK). It's important to really focus on the questions and not the case more generally - be concise but precise.

After 30 minutes you are taken to sit outside an interview room and wait to be called in. I continued to have a look through the case, refining my notes and thinking about exactly what I was going to say - other people seemed not to be doing this - odd. There were four very friendly barristers in the interview room - one looked fairly young - she only asked a couple of questions about the financial statement at the end, the other three were older, one was a QC. They took charge of one section of the interview each.

First section was the case commentary. They asked me to just go for it, so I said what I had prepared about the first question. I got the impression I could have carried on straight away with all the questions in turn, but I actually sort of paused in between each chunk and the barrister posed the next question each time, as if I didn't know what the question was going to be, so it felt slightly rehearsed, like we were reciting lines from a play or something which was good in a way. I think the case commentary is the most important part of the process, I think I did well and that's why I have a scholarship - the rest of the interview I thought I could have done better.

Then I was asked to pick a book or a film and persuade the panel, in one minute exactly, to read/watch it, after about 10 seconds preparation time. I really struggled to choose a book/film and spent about 9.5 seconds choosing one and 1.5 seconds thinking about what to say. Then I treated the exercise sort of like 'just a minute' trying to talk almost constantly and neglecting to think very much. Definitely could have been better.

The next section was CV questions. What was the most valuable experience of such-and-such mini, what exactly did you do on the legal advice clinic, which area of law do you want to go into, things like that. I had prepared a list of about 30 questions that I thought could come up and rehearsed some of them with a friend who does recruitment for law firms which was handy.

The remaining questions were a mixture. One was on legal reform - what would I reform if I could? I rattled off some real rubbish (I thought, afterwards) about sexual consent and rape shield legislation. Should have been more prepared for such an obvious question. I had focused preparation on current affairs, and none really came up. I can't remember any other questions from this section. Perhaps there weren't any others, except which practice area and legal reform.

The whole interview lasted about 15 minutes, with the case commentary taking about 8 of those. At the end I was asked if any of my financial circumstances had changed and then whether there was anything I would like to add to my application. Even though nothing had changed, it's worth trying to sell yourself a little bit more in this last moment by pretending there's something to say.

I was one of the last interviews on the second day and they told me they would be making decisions that afternoon. Then I waited about 3 weeks and finally heard just before the BPTC offer acceptance deadline, which was obviously helpful. I was surprised by the value of the scholarship (enough to pay London tuition fees with some change) but I think that is purely down to my family's financial background, so either you'll benefit from that, or you won't.

In summary, therefore, the key factor in getting an Inner Temple scholarship appears to be your ability to read an appeal judgment for 30 minutes, understand and summarise the important bits, and comment intelligently on it in an interview, as well as answer some CV questions acceptably and cobble together a not-terrible application form. It also helps if you're poor. If you can satisfy these conditions, apply to Inner! Good luck.