Bar courses: a student’s guide to barrister training 2024/25

To become a barrister, students must pass a Bar course at an education provider that's been approved by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). All aspiring barristers must complete a Bar course in order to be ‘called to the Bar’, which enables you to apply for a pupillage. Read LawCareers.Net’s guide to Bar courses to understand what you need to do to reach qualification as a barrister.

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Bar courses take one year to complete when studying full time. The courses are provided by different universities and vary in fees (between £12,000 and £20,000), contact time with tutors, materials provided and learning styles catered for. 

Bar courses are also titled differently depending on the course provider (eg, ‘Bar Vocational Course’, ‘Bar Practice Course’, ‘Barrister Training Course’, ‘Bar Vocational Studies’ and more). While all providers use a common set of assessment criteria, they don't all run the same assessments. The BSB outlines the elements aspiring barristers must pass to be 'called to the Bar'.

Students must pass their Bar course to be eligible for a pupillage – the final stage of qualifying before being able to practise as a barrister. 

Check the BSB's Authorised Education and Training Organisations factsheet for information on those delivering the vocational component of Bar training and the courses they deliver. 

What are the requirements to qualify as a barrister?

Qualifying as a barrister is a three-stage process:

• The academic stage: an undergraduate law degree or any non-law degree plus a graduate law conversion course. The minimum undergraduate requirement is a 2.2, but you’re realistically likely to need at least a 2.1. 
• The vocational stage: a postgraduate Bar course (see more about the new Bar courses below).
• The pupillage/work-based stage: one year practising as a pupil barrister at a barristers’ chambers or other organisation, with the first six months spent shadowing a senior barrister and the second six working on cases as a junior.

In addition, prospective barristers must join one of the four Inns of Court and complete 12 ‘qualifying sessions’ run by their Inn – this takes place during the vocational stage. The deadline for applying to an Inn is at least 12 weeks before the start of the Bar course. The Inns also administer the ‘fit and proper person’ test, which prospective barristers must pass when they’re called to the Bar after graduating from the Bar course.

Find out more about joining an Inn with this LawCareers.Net Feature, ‘Becoming a barrister: what are the Inns of Court?’

The vocational stage of training can be completed in the following ways:

• A full-time one-year course or a part-time course completed over a longer period.
   
• The Bar course divided into two parts. One part of the Bar course may be delivered through self-study (ie, no tutor contact). Students don’t pay fees for part two of the course until they’ve successfully completed part one. Part two is the much more expensive part of the course, so this means that students who fail part one aren’t locked into paying the full fees (as they were on the BPTC). Students can also take a break after completing part one and return to part two later.
   
• A course that combines the academic and vocational stages (where the Bar course is integrated into an undergraduate degree).

The Bar course can be combined with a master’s (LLM) qualification, which makes it eligible for postgraduate student loan funding.

The BSB states that students will have unlimited attempts to pass the Bar course assessments within five years. That said, the academic regulations of the vocational course providers may differ from this for their associated academic awards. 

Barrister apprenticeships

While plans for barrister apprenticeships have been discussed and are considered a “viable option” to qualifying as a barrister, this route is not yet available. However, a collaborative group, which includes some barristers’ chambers and the Ministry of Justice are allegedly working together to design a programme. It was expected to be developed by 2024  but there’s currently no further information available on this. Much like a solicitor apprenticeship, the proposed barrister apprenticeship would take six years to complete and would involve a combination of work and study with barrister apprentices completing a law degree and the Bar course while they work.

What are the transitional arrangements for BPTC students?

From September 2020 bar courses replaced the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). BPTC students had until Spring 2022 to complete their course. BPTC students with assessments still to pass after Spring 2022 will be affected in several ways, including that they’ll need to take the new centralised assessments for civil litigation and professional ethics. Full details are on the BSB website.

Bar courses

Here are the institutions and Bar courses that enable students to complete the vocational stage of barrister training. To secure a place on one of the below courses, students must apply directly to a particular university or law school. This information applies to the 2024/25 or 2025/26 academic year dependent on Bar course providers' most up-to-date information.