Barrister apprenticeships

Recently their has been some news about barrister apprenticeships maybe being introduced in April 2024. As a current Year 12 student would this option be available for me or would it be too new. I’m currently stuck with what to do in the future. I am certain on law but torn between barrister and solicitor. I like the advocacy and court part of being a barrister but also like the researching of evidence part of a solicitor. I’m also torn between criminal, family and criminal negligence law. I know I don’t want to do corporate or commercial but apart from that I’m quite uncertain. I want to do something more people based rather than company based. Would anyone have any advice?
Thankyou for responses on my previous posts, they have helped clear up some choices within my pathway!

Reply 1

Stiffy Byng

Hello, I think that the new scheme is so new that it's too early to say how it will work.

I don't know what the apprentice barristers will be doing when not attending the university part of the six year programme. They can of course do legal research and try their hand at drafting pleadings, opinions, written arguments and so on, but they won't, I assume, be able to argue cases in court until quite late on in the process. As you may know, in the current form of pupillage, you can take on cases of your own in the second six months, although in the big commercial chambers it is the norm for pupils to do a full twelve months before taking on their own work, and to be closely mentored for another six months or so thereafter.

In the middle ages a person became a barrister by living in chambers with and reading the law with a barrister in one of the Inns of Court or Inns of Chancery for several years before being called to the Bar. Barristers used to live in their chambers as well as work there, and the Inns were (and to some extent still are) colleges, which is why they physically resemble colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. The Inns of Chancery died out after the legislative fusion of law and equity in the 1870s, and now four Inns of Court remain. They are a mixture of training school, funder, club, and commercial landlord.

By the nineteenth century, it was more usual for people to take a degree (typically in classics, but latterly in law or other things) and then read for the Bar before doing a year of unpaid pupillage (the pupil had to pay 100 guineas to the pupil master, a custom which died out in the mid C20). Degrees became compulsory for barristers in the 1950s or 1960s, IIRC.

Pupillage is a sort of apprenticeship, and nowadays pupillages are paid. The new scheme to some extent resembles the medieval system of a slow and steady path to qualification. It may take a while to get going.

I have a slight concern that just doing law for six of the most formative years of a person's life might render the person a bit narrow. Barristers used always to be highly educated and usually well read in many subjects as well as in the law, and I think that it would be a shame if that ceased to be the case.

Reply 2

Stiffy Byng

On the solicitor vs barrister choice, what I say to students when I give careers talks at universities is along these lines -

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If you are interested in how the law is made and re-made in the courts, then you should be a litigator, and you will be closer to the engine-room of the law if you are a barrister. (There is a lucid explanation by an experienced solicitor on the "barrister with a 2.2" thread of why, for sound commercial reasons, not many solicitors pursue the advocacy path (there are no obstacles to them doing so).

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If you don't mind a measure of risk and uncertainty in your working life, consider the Bar. Bear in mind that you will have no regular pay cheque, no sick pay, no holiday pay, and, unless and until you become a Star of the Bar, your practice will have periods of ebb and flow. You can be the darling of Clifford Chance one month, unemployed the next.

•

As a barrister, you have a fairly flat career profile. The job is more or less the same job on the last day as it was on the first day. The cases get bigger and harder. The fees get bigger. Taking Silk is a step, but it's still more or less more of the same. Becoming a Judge means entering a new job altogether.

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The solicitor path involves rising through the ranks, and taking on management and leadership roles as you rise. The partner's job is quite different from the job of the junior associate. Management and leadership overlap, but are not the same thing.

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As a barrister, you will never have to manage a budget, be appraised, conduct appraisals, hire and fire etc, apart from some involvement with budgeting etc and hire/fire of chambers staff if your are on your chambers management committee (and in big chambers, the management is done by professional managers, leaving the barristers free to do barristering).

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Solicitor or barrister, you have to do marketing pretty much non-stop, and all lawyers train other lawyers.

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All lawyers work in teams, but as a barrister the team changes for almost every match.

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As a solicitor, your practice will acquire transferable value once you make partner, and you can cash out at the end, but you have to buy in when you make partner.

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A barrister does not buy in, but he or she can't cash out. On the other hand, a barrister does not take the commercial risk of the law firm failing.

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If you are interested in the everyday relationship between business and the law, or other everyday activities and the law, you may prefer to be a solicitor.

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Many solicitors are very profound lawyers and hyper-specialised. Many barristers are very broad generalists. The old "solicitors are GPs and barristers are hospital consultants" analogy no longer holds good, although it has some very broad resonance for general common law practitioners.

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What's your personality type? Can you follow orders? If yes, join a law firm (and hope to rise to give orders). If not, be a barrister. Do you have huge amounts of self belief and a rhino-thick skin? If yes, be a barrister. If you cringe at making a fool of yourself in public, don't be a barrister.

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You can start as a solicitor and become a barrister, and you can start as a barrister and become a solicitor.

(edited 2 months ago)

Reply 3

Noorx

when is the scheme for barrister apprenticeship set to open and does anyone have a link to page with the most recent updates ?

Reply 4

sophiew555

Original post by Noorx

when is the scheme for barrister apprenticeship set to open and does anyone have a link to page with the most recent updates ?

https://www.thelawyerportal.com/blog/introducing-barrister-apprenticeships-in-the-uk/

Reply 5

Noorx

Original post by sophiew555

https://www.thelawyerportal.com/blog/introducing-barrister-apprenticeships-in-the-uk/

thank you so much

Reply 6

Stiffy Byng

The scheme may have a slow start until a sufficient number of chambers participate in the scheme. The difficulty there may be that the Bar is quite an academic profession, and I doubt that chambers will rush to join the scheme. Many chambers may prefer the current system, especially in the present market, where supply exceeds demand and chambers can take their pick from the most academically successful graduates.

In addition, barristers' chambers are not law firms. Chambers are collectives which share costs but do not share profits. Collective spending decisions can be hard to make when you have fifty to a hundred individual traders being asked to pay into the cost of six year apprenticeships as opposed to one year pupillages.