1GC

Got a first round interview for 1GC and SUPER nervous since this is my DREAM chamber... anyone had an interview here before? Any tips?

Ok, three things.

1. I entirely understand those sorts of requests, but you need to be careful with them. The best you can get is someone telling you what that set did last year. The format may remain the same, but the questions will almost certainly be different, and indeed there is no guarantee that the format remains the same. Generally speaking there are only a handful of different things that you can be asked to do or answer in a pupillage interview. There are competency based questions, general non legal interview or discussion questions, and legal discussion questions. Then in terms of exercises there are written exercises that you will generally be given advanced notice of, or advocacy exercises where you generally get the information and papers you need on the day. That's more or less it, and you should be able to do some broad preparation for all of those things. Beyond that preparation, others telling you what happened last year is highly unlikely to help you, and may actually disadvantage you if you place reliance on the information and it turns out not to be accurate for this year.

2. Be careful with the 'dream set' thinking. It results in candidates putting so much pressure on themselves, but more to the point, even the most informed candidate knows so little about how sets work and how this job works. You have no idea how work is allocated in the set. What opportunities you may have. How easy it is to access support as a pupil or new tenant. How social the set is. Whether or not you'll get on with the clerks. And so many other really fundamental things. In short, you actually have no idea how good a fit the set will be for you. You certainly have no idea whether it's your 'dream' set or not. So don't pin your hopes so highly on something that you simply cannot understand at this stage.

3. It's 'Chambers', not 'Chamber'. Chambers is both singular and plural. Not wanting to be unfair, but if you don't know that it somewhat reinforces the second point I made above.

I appreciate you likely woke up and thought you were giving ‘useful’ advice by commenting here, however this is absolutely unnecessary and comes across as condescending. I hope you can find some positivity in your life x

I'm not naive enough to think I always hit the mark, but to be perfectly honest I do think I have a pretty strong track record of giving 'useful' advice in this forum. I will concede that the third point was a little sharp and could come across as insensitive, and I am happy to apologise for that, but I don't see anything wrong with the first two points, being the substantive part of the post. Indeed, it's perhaps the fourth time I've made that first point during this pupillage cycle, and it's been well received every other time I've posted it. Even doing the very best I can, I do not see how the first two paragraphs are condescending, and I'm somewhat surprised that you took my post so badly that you felt it necessary to register for an account and post twice, including a swipe at me inferring that I don't have positivity in my life. I'd respectfully suggest that you have perhaps not assessed this situation as objectively as you might think, which I would actually understand given that you're going through the same process as the OP and would naturally want to stand in their corner if you perceived them to be dealt with unfairly. I still very much remember the stress and anxiety of the pupillage process, so I don't begrudge you reacting like that. Perhaps on reflection you might view my original post differently and feel that you could equally have responded to me in a more measured way, but then again perhaps not. It might just something we need to agree to disagree on, and that's fine too. Best of luck with your applications.

Ummm I just checked this and I can assure you I didnt 'set up an account and post twice' ?! I'm not that concerned about this chat!!! I'm new to studentroom so didn't even know that this is something people do?!

Thank you - the third point was the issue I had with your post. I appreciate the first two and the advice there. I’m new to TSR for pupillage applications this round and normally don’t comment/just watch threads. It’s a time to be supportive with the high stress of all these applications - so I’m glad you acknowledged that.