I am a practising barrister on my Chambers' pupillage committee - AMA

Somewhere in between. They're certainly relevant, but there's no need to mention all the specifics such location and topic, in fact there probably won't be space on a pupillage application form to include all of that. But I would mention specific competitions, particularly if you did well in them. The key with all of this is to think of it from the perspective of the person reading your application. What are you trying to demonstrate to them? What do they need to know in order to for you to demonstrate that? If you approach it from that angle it should help you to filter out the information you don't need.

Are pupillage awards at a specific set generally comparable to what that pupil can expect to earn in the early years of their practise? Or is it that barristers earnings are so varied that it's impossible to know.

@Crazy Jamie

Hi Jamie,

What is the ratio of first time appearance trials do you get compared to appellate level hearing? I’d imagine the ratio has changed with your progress, how significant has the change been from your early years to present? As I am developing an interest in public law specialism and particularly judicial review cases, would something similar apply to my situation?

Best,

Jarifa

Personally the vast, vast majority of cases I do are still first instance. You have to remember that appeals (perhaps not counting appeals from the Magistrates Court to the Crown Court, where there is an automatic right) are an incredibly small proportion of overall litigation. There is a fair amount of luck involved because you have to be instructed on a case where an appeal point arises, either because of an error or a nuanced point of law that needs to be explored on appeal. Alternatively, you need to be sufficiently well regarded in your field that you are instructed on an appeal where you didn't represent your client at first instance, but it's usually only very senior practitioners or silks that meet that criteria. I'm involved in a case at the moment, for example, which is definitely going to be appealed regardless of who wins (we're awaiting judgment at the moment) and the other side brought a silk in for the final stages of the cases realising that it's going further regardless, but I'm just fortunate that I was instructed from the outset and will (I assume) get to stick with the case throughout.

There are two factors that occur to me that may impact the number of appeals you do. The first is the set that you are in. Specifically, if you are in one of the very top sets for your area of law, you're more likely to be involved in more weighty cases from the start and are therefore probably more likely to be involved in appeals, either as a junior or on your own account. Second, I do think there is some scope for variance depending on the area of law. Anecdotally it seems to me that criminal practitioners are perhaps a little more likely to find themselves in the Court of Appeal over legal points, but public law is another one of those areas where you could, in theory, find yourself involved in more appeals. That is because public law cases bring new points or involve unusual facts more often than your average area of law. For example, there is a challenge going on at the moment to the government's decision to make vaccines mandatory for NHS workers. There are similar challenges brought all the time in relation to public policy, and broadly I would have thought there is more chance of those sorts of cases proceeding to appeal. But again, you have to be in a position to be involved in those cases. Even in practice areas where you're more likely to be involved in appeals generally, it will still be a clear minority of your case load until you reach the very top of the profession.

No, you should be earning more. There will always be exceptions, but many sets (certainly the vast majority who set second six earnings above the minimum) will actually expect you to comfortably earn more than the stated second six earnings in second six itself, and in the first few years after that your earnings should steadily increase. The extent to which your earnings increase will vary considerably depending on the set, the practice area and so on, but the stated second six earnings from most sets will inevitably be a relatively low estimate of what you can expect to earn, because they don't want to be in a position where they're paying you money to top it up when you don't hit that level, hence why you should generally expect to exceed any minimum earnings that are above the regulated minimum. I've certainly seen quite a few pupillage awards where I know the prospective pupils will probably earn multiples of the pupillage award in their early years simply from my knowledge of the set and practice area.

Most of the exceptions will be sets that have minimum pupillage awards, in areas such as crime, which are not set up to allow their pupils to quickly progress through the types of cases that they deal with. I don't mean the latter in any deliberate sense. I've said before that not all sets are created equal, which I generally mean in terms of how well they're run, but from the perspective of how likely you are to progress in your career generally there are more factors than that which come into play. For example, in crime your earnings are going to be dictated to a significant degree by how quickly you start doing jury trials. If as a criminal pupil you join a set that is very middle heavy with a lot of practitioners directly above you, it may take several years for the crown court work to filter down to you. By contrast, even in a smaller set if there are a fewer or better spread out practitioners in terms of call, you can find yourself doing better work much quicker, and you'll earn more. I was actually talking to a couple of current pupils recently and comparing two sets that do crime, both of which are very well regarded. But one is middle heavy as I mentioned, and the other more regular gaps between practitioners. One relatively junior barrister at that set is a friend of mine and confirmed that they did jury trials in their second six, whereas I know that pupils at the other set usually have to wait two or three years for a first jury trial. So that illustrates the difference; whilst I think both sets have minimum awards, the pupils doing jury trials in second six will very comfortably earn more than the minimum, and will very comfortably earn more than the pupils at the other set.

Hopefully Jamie won't mind, but I think it may be useful for me to take this one. I am a Commercial Chancery barrister - i.e the area of law where, if a case were to take one month, it would be here. I do a lot of written advisory work, sometimes where things are fairly complicated and everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong.

You can't take one case a month. Mainly because especially at the junior end (and even above that), you aren't going to get cases that are complicated enough to need that much time, and the client isn't going to pay you for spending a whole month on it. When you get more senior, you will have the complicated cases but also be much faster in dealing with them anyway because you'll have a good corpus of knowledge. Bigger trials and things can occupy a lot of time, but that's because when you get to those stages there is just a lot of work to be done.

The other thing that you need to consider is when you get paid vs the hours billed. One case a month means that unless that case pays soon, you aren't getting paid. I try to make sure to do a fair amount of smaller low value stuff so that I still get trickle in income. As a result, I think it's good to work on multiple cases if you can so that some things will actually get paid and keep you going while you wait for other things.

At normal levels of work, I probably take on 1-3 new cases a week, but it very much depends on what else I have going on with existing cases, and what the timescales are. I probably say "yes" to that many, but there will be delays in getting client sign off, instructions or money on account. From what I gather, the Chancery bar has far fewer last minute hearings (and indeed hearings in general) such that there is less of an expectation that if something comes in last minute you have to drop everything to do it, but that may also be Chambers specific. It will depend on the kind of relationship you end up having with your clerks.