This post is somewhat off-topic, although I justify it as relevant to careers in general.
I am a former solicitor who is transferring to the bar, and I’m currently in my pupillage. As a result, through visits to my Inn, chats during my call night, and most of all in the last few weeks whilst my chambers recruits next year’s pupils, I’ve realised the enormous struggle faced by wannabe baby barristers.
The number of students graduating from the BVC (which, and sorry to rub it in everyone, I happily never had to do) is grossly outweighed by the number of pupillages available, which are being fought over by several years’ graduates. Law blog Reductio ad Absurdum crunches some of the numbers from the Bar Standards Board’s Wood Report into the problem:
In the present round of OLPAS there are 294 pupillages on offer and there have been applications from 3768 individual students. That’s a ratio of one pupillage per 12.8 applicants!
The human tragedy of this gets to me a bit – I can just imagine all the excited parents packing their kids off to the course before showing off to everyone that little Johnny’s going to be a barrister. Meanwhile, little Johnny begs borrows or steals £10,000-odd fees, pays board and lodging for a year (probably in London), does his dining, maybe even buys a wig and gown, and completes the course with… nothing. It’s unfair.
The proposed solution is the raising of entrance standards, with a focus on written and spoken communication. I can see this – I’ve encountered someone with a Very Competent on the BVC who in cross-examination said, in an impenetrable accent:
You was in toilets three four minutes, isn’t it?
He meant:
You were in the toilets three or four minutes, weren’t you?
The witness had to ask him to repeat the question before she understood him, and the force and flow of his cross-exam went out the window. His every question was like that. His submissions were intelligently structured and the right points addressed, but his level of English simply made him a bad advocate.
If the bar is to survive, it will be because of a reputation for excellence at trial advocacy. There’s nothing wrong with high standards.
But the nature of tests is that people study to beat them, and a grade or a pass on the test isn’t necessarily reflective on that student’s appeal to a prospective chambers. I honestly believe more thought should have been given to requiring an offer of pupillage before the BVC is commenced. The majority of law firms manage perfectly well recruiting solicitor trainees prior to the LPC, on the strength of exam results, interests, and performance at assessment days. Chambers could do this just as well, and I fail to see the disadvantage to anyone, certainly not in comparison to the wasted money and broken dreams of many BVC graduates.
My own advice to someone thinking of a BVC but who is worried about pupillage is to wait – do another job for a couple of years. Make it law related if you like, there are scores of decently paid and fulfilling paralegal jobs in he larger law firms and it will educate you as to whether it’s an industry you want to be in. What’s more, work experience will give you CV points and transferable work and social skills which will help you find a pupillage. The pupils recruited at my current chambers have, for the last couple of years, all had some sort of job before pupillage. It’s not a chambers policy, it’s just that these applicants raise themselves above the pack.
Interesting post – it is a serious issue and problem.
I don’t know if it will assist in terms of getting a steer on the BVC issue(s) – but I have just done two podcasts on The Wood report – one with Jon Mcleod on behalf of the BSB and one with Richard de Friend, responding for The College of Law. I am doing a podcast today with Stuart Sime, BVC director of the ICSL: / City Law School.
I would be interested in your thoughts on these podcasts – if you have the time / inclination to listen to them – a ‘big ask’ given that they are fairly long interviews!
UE: The issue of access to the BVC is one which, I suspect, will run and run. I am not sure that I would advocate the need to obtain pupillage before the BVC – that is, of course, a self regulating choice to some extent which is already available to all anyway. No-one is forced to enrol on the BVC (although I don’t think some of those who do enrol have any sense of reality of their prospects of success). However, one of the points which you raise is a very valid one, and one whose manifestations I witnessed on my BVC. There was one candidate – very bright, as it happens – who ended all questions in cross examinations “innit?”. Their syntax was way off what one would normally expect from an articulate lawyer. This was, to some extent, a cultural issue. However, it seemed completely alien in the context in which this language was used and certainly had the students on the receiving end asking for clarification as to what the question was – doesn’t bode well for practice.
As a matter of interest, as a solicitor, what did you have to do to cross qualify? You say you are doing pupillage but hint at the fact that you didn’t have to do the BVC. AD
Charon – I have downloaded them to my phone and shall certainly listen. In fact, it provides an excuse to get out of a walk I’m supposed to do on Sunday and puts me on a sunbed in the garden instead…
AD -
A transferring solicitor will have to:
– Be approved by a committee of the BSB (so presumably any disciplinary proceedings by the Law Soc count against you);
– join and be called by an Inn;
…and then some or all of the following:
– Spend a couple of weekends and a grand and a half of money doing the last two parts of the Bar Council Aptitude Test, on advocacy and ethics (the other parts being for foreign lawyers transferring to the English Bar);
– Do some dining (usually half the standard amount, and to be completed within three years of call)
– Do some pupillage – which can be reduced dependent on experience.
So as you can imagine the process is mainly filling in forms and writing out a lot of cheques (including a rip off charge of £117.50 from the Law Soc for printing off and posting a certificate of good character).
I had been a solicitor for only a couple of years, and had to do the aptitude test and a full year’s pupillage. I *might* have been able to shave three months from pupillage if I’d applied, but my chambers don’t really like pupillages shorter than a year, so I didn’t feel it was politic.
In comparison to my experience, a solicitor I met who had notched up nearly twenty years as a Crown Prosecutor had to do a three month practising pupillage and that was it: bang, he’s a barrister.
So no BVC for me, although I did have to go through the rigmarole of becoming a solicitor first, which isn’t much better. Over at Simon Myerson’s blog I think some wannabe barristers have suggested becoming a solicitor as some sort of circuitous way of then becoming a barrister, but I actually became a solicitor with the initial intention of remaining one.
Anyway, more of my thoughts on the BVC later…
Ave Atque Vale!
The fate of successful BVC students is not as grave as those taking the LPC course.
Not having seen the numbers, I will have to rely on anecdote, and that ‘evidence’ says that a Training Contract are every bit as difficult to land as a Pupilage, but the BVC offers some interim relief.
1. For starters, on completion of the BVC, graduates are allowed to call themselves ‘Barristers’ (at leaset to the rest of the world). LPC graduates have not title at all for their efforts. This is a wise move by the Bar considering the huge proportion of students who will never be fully qualified, and an unforgiveable marketing oversight on the part of the Law Society. “Great, you’ve finished (yet another) law course,” your friends and family ask. “what are you now?”
“Er… nothing.”
“Not a lawyer yet?”
“If I said I was, it would be a disciplinary matter so, no. No more a lawyer than you are. Or your babysitter.”
You would have thought it obvious to the Law Society that some of us wannabe lawyers are in it (at least in part) for a status boost. Get the marketing people on to it and think up a name for chrissakes.
2. There is always the comfort of knowing that if ever a pupilage does come along, it’ll only be for one year compared with two years for a training contract. TWO YEARS!!
3. And this is the clincher. As UE suggests, BVC graduates can (like their LPC counterparts) find a position as a paralegal and gain some useful trade experience. However, whereas the humble LPC graduate can never qualify as a Lawyer without finding a training contract, the Bar graduate can simply plug away at work and then spin an application to the Law Soc under the Qualified Lawyers Transfer Regulations 1990 stating that s/he has completed two years legal practice acceptable to the Society;
or: been employed in a way consistent with service under a training contract.
I’ll say that again in another way, because there is no way that even the cleverest lawyer could possibly understand it on the first reading – it’s just too bizarre:
Whereas Janet and John have worked together as paralegals for the last two years, John can never qualify as a solicitor unless he gets a training contract, but Janet can. This is because John decided to pay the Law Society loads of his own money in fees and membership and study the Law Society’s own course and adhere to the Law Society’s code of conduct and uphold the Law Society’s good name.
Janet, on the other hand, didn’t much fancy the Law Society at all. She preferred the Bar.
So, naturally, the Law Society will treat them accordingly? Nah.
John’s membership of the Law Society, his loyalty, his dilligent hard work at the LPC and his subsequent paralegal experience will count for nothing (except maybe 6 months grace if he does get a contract).
Janet, conversely, will be greeted with open arms. For nothing more than a few hundred quid and an arithmetic exam, the Law Society will allow this outsider (as they do outsiders from all around the world) full admission to the roll.
The lesson is, if you want to be a solicitor, join the Bar.
P.S. John could try a crafty ILEX route if he was The moral of the lesson is
Hello Michael, sorry not to reply sooner. It’s been a devil of a week.
I agree with most of what you say – and indeed I am the proud owner of an LPC myself, although I was lucky enough to have a training contract in the bag when I started.
Although being a ‘barrister’ after call but before pupillage doesn’t enable the person to provide any legal services under the title, you’re absolutely right that they can call themselves a barrister in almost any other context.
http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/guidance/faqs/ (Q7)
This is an obvious advantage if you’re seeking any other role, whether it’s legally oriented such as reporting or writing, or in the wider world where employers will rarely appreciate the distinction between a barrister who has practiced and a barrister who has simply passed the BVC.
LPC-graduates have no such CV kudos, save for recruiters that already know about it (of which admittedly there are some).
I’m afraid that everything I’ve seen so far doesn’t move me from view that BVC (and perhaps LPC) entry should be pupillage / training contract dependent.
Hi Usefully employed,
I wanted to find out if one can qualify as a solicitor via the BVC route.
Therefore will not need a training contract after the BVC and be a qualified Solicitor after.
Thanks in advance
This can be done, but being the opposite of the route I took I’m not sure of the mechanics. The Law Society have information at:
http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/qltt.page
and read Simon Myerson at:
http://pupillageandhowtogetit.blogspot.com/2007/05/becoming-solicitor-first.html
Hi all,
I have read these posts with interest and there are some very good points regarding the transfer tests and ILEX.
However it would seem that the SRA are once again changing the rules; unless you already have a BVC you will not able to cross qualify as a solicitor. The gate has shut this year (that is, the rules will change in September, which will mean that unless you have already obtained the BVC you will have to apply under the new system). The key change in the new system seems to be that a ‘qualified lawyer’ for the purposes of the test no longer includes non-practicing barristers.
That blogs is one hundred percent original content with an impressive range of topics. The issue of access to the BVC is one which, I suspect, will run and run.Thanks for information.
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john
Employment Law