Is it easier to become a barrister or solicitor?

The comment can be seen in a post of wild colonial boy which he responded to - he has experience of admin at 1 specific law school. I have the experience of being in the profession. And he is simply wrong that 1 in 2 good people get pupillage. It is a really really bad message to send on this forum as it is so wrong. Nothing to do with down stairs.

I private messaged him to say be more considered in your petulant responses now everyone at your law school knows who you are as your the BPTC administrator and you outed yourself by choosing a 1 off statistic. I therefore advised him he should delete his posts. I did not demand anything!

I then deleted 1 post as it mentioned the law school so i felt i had been harsh. Not for any other reason. As the statistic is so obscure anyone who reads the 2011 bar provider reports will know anyway. it is the only one which has such a statistic so if wcb says he does not work at this school he is ether lying about where he works general (as his place didnt have 30%) or just lying.

I am finding this extremely strange from Wild colonial boy and shall not be commenting further. He should be mortified as so many students read this forum everone will know who he is and how lacking in decorum and maturity.

I will add my tuppen'orth worth on these stats.

Although in 2009/10 460 people obtained pupillage, BSB records only show that 376 did the BVC/BPTC. 31 were exempted (mostly solicitor transferees) and there was no data on 53. Assuming that the 53 broke proportionately, that would mean that only 425 pupillages wet to BVC/BPTC graduates. In fact it is more likely that a greater proportion of the 53 were non-standard applicants and that is why their have been missed in the data-collection.

A much harder question is how many pupillages were not truly open.

Most pupillage applicants would have made a Pupillage Portal application. The exceptions would be those who received a "closed" pupillage.


The PP applicant numbers are fairly constant at 2800 per year. That is lower than the Wood Report estimate of 4000 looking for pupillage each year.

425/2800 is about 1 in 6 1/2. I suspect once "closed" pupillages and pupillages won by transferees are taken out of account, in any given year a BPTC graduate has a 1 in 7 chance of pupillage.

(Please forgive me everyone else here)

FMQ, you sound very... international.

I've heard (though far be it for a mere administrator to comment on the conduct of someone "in the profession") that using correct spelling, expressing yourself in full sentences, etc tends to contribute to the likelihood you'll gain pupillage.

What do you think, as someone in the profession?

...

http://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/qualifying-as-a-barrister/bar-professional-training-course/bptc-providers/bptc-monitoring-visits/


Report of Kaplan section 5. None of the others say because, as all BVC students know, those on the other courses who begin with pupillage are few and far between! There was talk at the time they set up that becuase Kaplan was new, they made it clear they were going to cherry pick so got a lot of good candidates keen to avoid the dead wood - hence the ridiculous statistics for kaplan compared to everywhere else

Regarding the back door to the profession, I understand that students can undertake the NY Bar + QLTS route then BVC (if that's the one you can refer to), though I haven't heard of anyone taking that final step, and even the NY Bar + QLTS route would be silly because I expect that these students would find it difficult to obtain work in England and Wales due to this being seen as a cheeky shortcut

Well, there certainly has to be some explanation for it, because as you say everyone with relevant experience knows that those figures are significantly higher than the norm. The report states that they had 60 students in that year, which means that 15 had secured pupillage before starting the course. That is a simply extraordinary figure, and suggests something outside of the norm going on, if indeed the figure is correct.:

I said to him as someone qualified through the system

At the end of the day WCB is totally wrong in everything he has said on this thread.

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