The Pupillage Interview/Acceptance/Rejection Thread 2023 Watch

Yes, I have been having this issue since the gateway opened. I have twenty Chambers on my watchlist but can only view three of them now.....

The max amount of characters for answering the questions in the gateways include spaces?

At step 6 the pupillage gateway has the question

I confirm that I have read the guidelines and acknowledge that once I submit my application, I will not be able to edit it. I further acknowledge that I will not be able to withdraw and replace it with a new application using the same account

and then

I wish to continue with my submission .

I don't yet want to submit and so wondered if this is the final question, i.e. by clicking continue it is submitted

I appreciate any clarification, cheers

I believe it will not submit, as along the top you will be able to see the steps you are completing. You are still on questionnaire, application summary is next where I assume you'll be able to view all of the information again before a final submission.

However, I am pausing at this stage myself until I am happy with what's before. Hopefully someone who has submitted can advise!

I chanced it and you were right, you get a summary page of the application before submission

I believe so although I am happy to be corrected

Has anyone else experienced issues with Gateway in that the questions that Chambers ask in the pupillage advert are different to the questionnaire question in Step 4? I have come across this with two chambers so far and it's really thrown a spanner in the works as I will have to redo most of my answers. For example one question was missing completely from Step 4 and for another 6 out of the 7 questions had large sections missing.

The tech team did get back to say it's the fault of the chambers but that they would inform them, and at the moment the closing date is still the same. I am not sure that this is fair because if I've already found two with this issue there must be more.

Just keen to get a sense of how widespread this issue is......

I don’t understand why you can’t change your academic/job history for different chambers. If you’ve done different mini pupillage it just feels like it would detract from your commitment to a particular area of law.

Has anyone sent their application forms via email and not received an automatic acknowledgement back? Chambers doesn't have a specific contact for pupillage apps so not sure what to do now.

I don’t understand why you can’t change your academic/job history for different chambers. If you’ve done different mini pupillage it just feels like it would detract from your commitment to a particular area of law.

I helped someone with this same query a few days ago. I asked them the same thing that I'll ask here, which is why would you leave out on one application compared to another, and why? It's a question you need to consider carefully, because the way that this post is phrased raises the concern that you will leave out better quality work experience over something that shows 'commitment'. In reality, people get specialist pupillages all the time without specialist work experience, and equally those with specialist work experience often get offered common law pupillages. In the majority of situations you should be able to put together a list of work experience that will work for all pupillages that you're applying for, because in practice the 'commitment' hurdle isn't as high as you think it is, whereas the tangible skills and experience that you have gained from the better quality work experience will be valuable regardless of the pupillage that you're applying for, and you should be able to demonstrate insight irrespective of what's in your work experience section.

As an aside to that, do remember that if there is something that you think is particularly relevant just for a small number of your applications, you can always refer to it in the questions at the end and not put it in the work experience section. I am not entirely sure what that would be, but that is always an option.

If you look at the summaries, they update so they are all the same. Emailed them as they say they are trying to change it for next year but as yet you can't change anything in the employment and academic history per chambers.