Bar Council publishes 2021 Pupillage report

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Last week, the Bar Standards Board (BSB) welcomed the publication of the Bar Council’s Pupillage Gateway report.

This news follows the BSB’s announcement of the 2022 pupillage Professional Ethics exam.

The Pupillage Gateway is the central source of information on pupillage recruitment at the Bar, owned by the Bar Council and used by Authorised Education and Training Organisations (AETOs) to recruit aspiring barristers.

The 2021 report highlights the pandemic’s impact on the number of pupillages being advertised.

The key takeaways from the report are as follows:

• “The number of pupillages offered on the Gateway has recovered somewhat post-pandemic but is not back to pre-pandemic levels.”
• “The number of applicants per Gateway advertisement continues to increase year on year.”
• “There’s nothing to suggest that those who have not studied law at undergraduate level are at a disadvantage.” (Visit the LawCareers.Net non-law student’s hub).
• “Candidates with a first-class degree, and candidates with Outstanding at BPTC-level, were more likely to receive an offer than those without.”
• “Applicants with a scholarship from one of the Inns of Court were significantly more likely to receive an offer of pupillage than those without”; and
• There’s a correlation between “success rates, protected characteristics and socioeconomic indicators.”

Commenting on the Bar Council’s report, the BSB’s Director General Mark Neale said: “This is an important report which will be read with interest by everyone who has an interest in the future of the Bar. As the report says, in February of this year the BSB reported that the number of pupillages registered for 2019-20 had fallen by 35% since the year before. Taking into account later registrations we are pleased to say that our latest figures now suggest that the decrease was closer to 21%. This remains a significant fall. We are pleased to see some signs of recovery, but the report shows that the pandemic is continuing to have an impact on the market for pupillages and that it has hit the publicly funded Bar, and especially the criminal Bar, hardest. We note that the report also suggests, as we have found, that White candidates disproportionately secured pupillage compared to candidates from ethnic minority groups. These remain causes for concern and the BSB will continue to monitor the market for pupillages closely.”

Read the 2021 Pupillage Gateway report for a deeper insight.