We offer up to four 12-month pupillages each year (beginning in October).
From 2024, pupils will receive an award of £75,000. £20,000 of this is available to be drawn down during the year prior to pupillage.
Why 11KBW?
We are a specialist civil law set providing high quality advice and advocacy to a wide range of private and public sector clients, both claimants and defendants. Members of Chambers regularly appear in the most important, interesting, and high-profile cases of the day in our core practice areas of employment, public, commercial, and data, information and media law.
As a pupil, you will have the opportunity to work on these cases with some of the leading practitioners at the English Bar.
We are committed to equality and diversity and strongly encourage applications for pupillage from members of groups which are under-represented at the Bar. Our ethos can be summarised as a commitment to outstanding advocacy and intellectual rigour, combined with a friendly and inclusive working culture. We believe in providing our pupils with a rewarding, challenging and supportive environment which will prepare candidates of the very highest calibre for an exceptional and enjoyable career at the Bar.
We are proud of our unparalleled record of members becoming some of the most distinguished members of the judiciary. We are proud that three of the senior judicial appointments from Chambers are women; and that Mr Justice Choudhury is the first British High Court Judge of Bangladeshi origin.
Pupillage at 11KBW
Pupillage is divided into three parts, each with a different supervisor (or two if they job-share the role).
In the first three months, you will be based almost exclusively with your supervisor, giving you an opportunity to settle in and have an in-depth experience of day to day practice. From month four, you will work with lots of different members of Chambers. This allows you to see the full range of practice areas and enables members of Chambers with different expertise and all levels of seniority to assess your work so we can build up a fair and complete picture before making tenancy decisions.
Our pupils do not practise on their own before the tenancy decision in July, but all of the work you do during pupillage will be on real, often ‘live’, cases. You will draft opinions, skeleton arguments, pleadings and other written pieces.
As well as doing assessed written work, you will have the opportunity to shadow your supervisors and other members of Chambers at hearings and client conferences.
Ongoing feedback
Feedback on your work is ongoing throughout pupillage, both from your supervisors and any other members of Chambers you work with. All significant pieces of work done for your supervisor, and all pieces of work done for members other than your supervisor, are marked against objective criteria such as legal research, analysis, and judgement. Work done for members other than your supervisor is marked by two members of Chambers, both of whom give feedback. Members of Chambers will tell you whether your work met the tenancy standard.
We believe that this ongoing, transparent assessment and feedback from a range of members of Chambers is the fairest way for us to assess your work and enables you and your supervisors to track your progress throughout the year.
We assess oral advocacy skills through the regular feedback sessions you will have to discuss your written work. There are also dedicated advocacy exercises during the year.
We offer pupillage only to individuals whom we believe have the potential to meet the tenancy standard. But we do not expect our pupils to produce work at that standard in the early periods of pupillage. Our aim in giving consistent feedback throughout the year is to enable you to develop all of the skills we assess by the time decisions about tenancy are made.
The tenancy decision
The tenancy decision is taken in July. We are committed to offering tenancy to every pupil whose work is consistently at the tenancy standard by the time of the decision.
This means that pupils are not in competition with one another for offers of tenancy. Everyone is assessed on their own merit.
Where a pupil is taken on after pupillage and becomes a tenant, past experience demonstrates that their first-year earnings will compare favourably to those of their peers at other leading Chambers, and leading City and US law firms. As barristers are self-employed, junior tenants’ earnings do vary depending on their workload and the areas in which they choose to practise.
Read a review of pupillage at 11KBW in the Chambers Student Guide.
Please see the further information on ‘How to Apply’, ‘Guide for Applicants’, ‘Life as a Pupil’, and ‘FAQ’ available on the links above.
