Pupillage - Serle Court

How Pupillage Works
Why Choose Us?
What We Offer
What We Look For
How To Apply & The Application Process
Life As A Pupil
More Information

Pupillage At Serle Court

Our pupillage programme is designed to provide the best possible foundation for commercial and chancery practice at the Bar: 12 months spent working with leading barristers on cases across the spectrum of business law, in an open and supportive environment, with an excellent prospect of tenancy.

We are genuinely committed to inclusivity and diversity and particularly encourage applications from candidates who may feel disadvantaged in any way.

How Pupillage Works

We recruit up to four pupils a year with a view to offering tenancy to all of them.

Our pupillage focusses on training: our priority is to make sure our pupils are as well prepared as possible for work and life as commercial and chancery barristers.

Each pupil sits with four supervisors, each in a different area of practice. Pupils work on live cases to gain real, practical experience of the work they will be doing in their future lives as tenants. We also provide advocacy exercises conducted in front of a senior member of Chambers, as well as other assessments designed to improve practical skills. Supervisors provide frequent feedback and monitor their pupils’ progress to ensure the work given fulfils their training needs.

Our pupils are not in competition with one another; each is assessed individually on their own merits. Pupils are encouraged to help and support one another as future colleagues in tenancy.

We strive to make pupils feel part of Chambers from the moment they accept their pupillage offers. They are invited to Chambers events, both formal and informal, to meet and get to know both members and staff.

Why Choose Us?

A top-tier commercial and chancery set. Serle Court is well-established at the top of the commercial and chancery Bar. We are consistently recognised as a stellar set in our core areas of practice, and are regularly instructed by both domestic and international clients on some of the most important and complex cases. Our work is exciting, challenging and rewarding.

Variety and flexibility of work. For both pupils and members, work at Serle Court offers tremendous variety. All members do commercial chancery work but, in addition, have the opportunity to act in other cases that interest them. This may be in areas such as property, insolvency, traditional trusts and estates, intellectual property, banking and investment, and many more. Our members have the flexibility to shape their practices in the way they want.

A friendly and collaborative culture. We are a warm, inclusive group of people who think it is important to balance excellence in our work with enjoying life outside of work. Our members are not under pressure to work harder than they want to or in ways that do not fit with their lives. Above all, we want everyone at Serle Court to be happy and fulfilled.

An application process carefully crafted to promote inclusivity and diversity. We have worked hard to try to ensure that our application process is as fair and accessible as possible. We aim to ensure that all talented candidates feel confident and comfortable applying to us, that non-law graduates are not disadvantaged, and that our selection processes effectively identify the best candidates irrespective of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, disability, age and background.

A strong prospect of tenancy. We aim to offer tenancy to all our pupils, provided they individually meet our assessment criteria. 15 of our last 18 pupils have stayed on as tenants, and the others who wished to practise at the Bar are successful tenants elsewhere.

What We Offer

We offer:

A highly competitive pupillage award of £85,000 (tax-free for the first 6 months).
Ability to draw up to £25,000 of the pupillage award during the year prior to pupillage.
First-year rent-free for new tenants.
New tenant income guarantee to assist with cash flow during the first two years of practice.

For guidance on options for funding the PGDL and the Bar Course, click here.

What We Look For

We look for highly motivated individuals with strong analytical ability, a practical approach, sound judgement, the ability to develop strong client relationships, and the potential to become an excellent advocate.

We have created a matrix of the attributes that we consider make an excellent barrister. Our pupil selection processes are designed to identify these qualities or the potential to develop them.

Chambers generally requires a minimum degree classification of 2:1. Your degree does not have to be in law.

How To Apply & The Application Process

Serle Court participates in the Bar Council’s online centralised application scheme, the Pupillage Gateway. Every application for pupillage at Serle Court must be made through the Gateway and within its timetable. View the timetable for applications in 2026 for pupillage commencing in 2027.

Full details of our selection process are set out in our Pupillage Policy. You should note the following points in particular:

Application forms are anonymised prior to being reviewed and marked.
The extra questions set by Chambers to be answered on the Gateway application form are marked in accordance with the marking scheme.
To ensure we treat all applicants as fairly as possible, everyone applying to Serle Court is now required to complete a short online situational judgment multiple-choice test created by business psychology consultants. This test is intended to help identify able candidates who may not necessarily perform so well on the formal parts of a traditional application. No applicants will be disadvantaged in any way if they perform poorly on the test.

Our first interviews are typically around 35 minutes long and are conducted by panels of three members of Chambers.
Of the candidates interviewed in the first round, about 10 will be invited to a second interview. The second interview is also conducted by a panel of three members of chambers. These interviews will centre on a mock client conference. Candidates will be given 40 minutes to consider a short problem question and prepare to deliver advice in a conference to members of chambers, who will play the role of clients/solicitors. The mock client conference itself will last around 30 minutes.
Neither interview is intended to assess candidates’ legal knowledge, and the questions are designed to be answerable just as well by someone with one term of legal education as by someone who has completed a full law degree.