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Pupillages nosedive by 20 per cent since 2000

Bar pupillages I didn't understand quite how the BVC providers can encourage latecomers to the profession or those with less good degrees as surely these are the very groups who would be discriminated against as most likely to have difficulties obtaining pupillage. Why not encourage students to acquire pupillage before the BVC? This happens to a large extent with the LPC. I agree that there will still be a number of BVC grads with little or no hope of getting pupillage but there must be other jobs that they can enter. The transferability of the training is another and more difficult issue. One benefit of the shortfall in pupillages seems to be that those who obtain pupillage will be more likely to get tenancy. This was not the case years ago. It has been a dubious benefit of having chambers paying pupils. They are no longer free labour. I wonder if it would have been more honest to say that the title barrister was conferred only after pupillage, as only those who obtain contracts will become solicitors. Neither the Inns nor the Neuberger Report grasped that nettle but it would seem more honest and more realistic. Perhaps the slight increase in employed barristers could also help as pupillages could be completed there. I suggest that quite different shifts in attitude and approach towards practice are acquired in the academic stage, the vocational stage at BVC, and in the course of practical training, and then in practice itself. It's almost like different stages of initiation.

31-Mar-2008

9:24 pm