Regional barristers chambers 3PB has announced it will boost the amount awarded to those undergoing pupillage at the set.

The award, effectively a pupil barrister’s salary, will now be worth £40,000, an increase of £10,000 from the previous £30,000 award.

This will make 3PB’s rate more than twice the minimum requirement set out by the Bar Standards Board in London (£18,960 per year) and almost three times the BSB’s rate of the regions (£16,601).

In addition to the increased award, 3PB has announced it will be increasing the number of pupils the set will take on to six from the previous number of four. This new level will see 3PB join fellow regional set Exchange Chambers as the sets with the highest number of pupil spots available each year.

In practice, this means 3PB’s overall expenditure on new pupils has increased by £60,000 per year as the set seeks to continue its sustained headcount growth over the several years.

3PB’s increase brings it in line with its regional competitors but is still substantially short of London’s top commercial sets. Magic circle set Essex Court Chambers, for example, will offer its 2023 and 2024 pupils an award of £75,000 per year, while also guaranteeing a minimum income of £100,000 in their first year of tenancy.

3PB does have a substantial commercial arm, though the set’s main strengths lie in its regional capabilities and advocacy in areas such as property and estates, construction and engineering, employment and discrimination and public and regulatory. The set boasts six chambers around England with sites in London, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Oxford and Winchester.

In The Lawyer’s recent Bar Top 30 report for Signal, 3PB was revealed to have been the fastest-growing set in England & Wales over the last five years. The set’s overall headcount grew by 33.74 per cent, from 163 tenants in 2016 to 218 at the time of the report’s publication.

Despite the set’s strong tenant growth, much of that has been on the junior end of the spectrum which is shown by the set’s relatively low percentage of its tenants having taken silk. At the time of the report’s publication in July 2021, just 15 of the set’s 218 tenants had taken silk equivalent to 6.8 per cent of overall headcount.