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Any questions about the Oxford BCL - ask away

Hi guys,

I'm a BCL student and happy to help any students/applicants with any queries they may have about the programme, or indeed the application process as a whole.

Ask away!

Reply 1

emeraldelise33

I have an offer from LSE and UCL in Laws and am hoping to get into this program after I finished. Do you think one offers a comparative advantage of getting into Oxford BCL? Thanks!

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

hi that's really kind of you. how are you finding the workload at BCL, as compared to your undergraduate studies? / and if that's okay, sharing about your current experience in other aspects would be helpful too.
from what you know, is a BCL almost a prerequisite for a pupilage at the London sets?
thank you so much for your time!

Reply 3

Stiffy Byng

Original post by Anonymous #1

Hello, I am a barrister in a London set of chambers. I was a member of a magic circle set for many years. I am now at a less swanky but still highly rated posh set.

If you are thinking of a pupillage in one of the magic circle chambers, then many of the other applicants will have firsts from Oxbridge, UCL, LSE, Durham, KCL etc, and many will have an LLM or BCL as well, obtained at Oxbridge, in London, or at an Ivy League. A BCL or LLM is not, however, a requisite for most London chambers. As far as I am aware, no chambers formally requires a BCL, but the reality is that the top chambers have the pick of candidates who tend to have postgraduate qualifications.

A tale of two nephews. One of my nephews has a 2.1 in Classics from Oxford, and a Distinction in the GDL. He has recently been taken on after pupillage in a good but not flashy set where he does a mixture of relatively upmarket crime and civil work.

Another of my nephews has a first in Jurisprudence from Oxford, did a Maitrise en Droit in Paris, has a very shiny BCL, and taught law at the LSE for a while. He has just been taken on after pupillage in one of the top legal-activist chambers. He is already the second junior in a major PIL case. I expect him to take Silk before he is much past forty.

When I started at the Bar in the 1980s, things were not quite as intense, but even then everyone who did pupillage in my set at the same time as me had been to Oxford or Cambridge, and the two of us with firsts were taken on. One was a bloke with a Cambridge first in law who was a junior fellow of his college. The other one was me, with an Oxford first in Modern History and a boggo GDL.

A good 2.1 in any subject from a Russell Group university will give any candidate a fighting chance at most sets of chambers, but for the top sets candidates need the plus plus plus.

Good luck!

(edited 3 weeks ago)

Reply 4

thegeek888

Original post by oxstudent

Hi guys,
I'm a BCL student and happy to help any students/applicants with any queries they may have about the programme, or indeed the application process as a whole.
Ask away!

How many tutorials do you have per week? 😧