Andrew

My journey to the Bar took place some time ago, but what I encountered and had to overcome is relevant today. My father came from quite humble origins. He worked hard in the advertising industry. He died suddenly when I was a teenager. My mother’s parents had fled to England from Russia in about 1900. She worked as a teacher all her life. On my father’s death she had to care for me and my sister. We were not well-off. Fortunately the City of London Corporation paid the fees at our school so we could complete our “A” levels.

Moving on, I worked as a junior in an Estate Agency. That gave me a taste for property and its law. I considered a law degree and eventually I obtained a scholarship to read law at Keble College, Oxford. I was the first person ever in my family to receive further education. Without the scholarship and the state grant my mother could not have afforded to pay for it. After some mini-pupillages I found that I preferred the Bar to the solicitors’ profession. With a County grant and scholarships from Lincoln’s Inn I could afford to do Bar Finals. Our means did not allow me to do a post-graduate degree.

After Bar Finals I worked at Harrods to earn some money for pupillage, which was then unpaid. Even worse, in my first 6 months I had to pay 50 guineas (£52.50p) premium to my pupil master. To afford living in pupillage I taught law at the weekends in Oxford and London. Once I obtained tenancy in June 1979 I carried on as a lecturer, for making a serious living at the Chancery Bar took time then. There were no guaranteed earnings for the junior tenant.

Fortunately today’s landscape is different from that of over 40 years ago. My simple message is that if you really want to get to the Bar and have the ability, you should get there. Discard false preconceptions of what is required. Persistence still counts.

Michael

At school, my expectations had been kept fairly modest for a variety of reasons, and so it was suggested that I should read chemistry at university. This was based on the assumption that I should be able to scrape the rather lowly grades required and not be troubled by having to write essays. I did rather better than expected and got an exhibition to read Natural Sciences at Cambridge. I was the first person in my family to go to university, and when there I was on a full grant.

After my first degree and some hiccups along the way, I talked my way into a doctorate in Biophysics at Oxford, during which time I tutored undergraduates and A-level students to earn money. Afterwards, as there were few job opportunities in the pure sciences, I joined the exodus from academia and worked for an America management consultancy firm – very well paid but hire and fire. I was duly made redundant when the work dried up. However, I had saved money and learnt that the legal framework that regulated the financial markets was often more important in determining what could be done rather than the availability of funds per se. This showed me the importance of law in the commercial world.

As a former scientist and consultant, I was really just a problem solver. Also, given that employment had not worked out well, I wanted a more independent job. A life as a barrister seemed to meet my skills and requirements, but I knew nothing about the Bar, and I had no contacts in any of the various legal professions (nor any other professions for that matter). Therefore, I set out to do a wide range of mini-pupillages with mixed results – some held decidedly old-fashioned and/or idiosyncratic ideas on suitability and eligibility. However, there were good bits, and so I applied for pupillages at tax and intellectual property sets. I was offered pupillages in both areas, and I took an IP one. I have remained in the IP field ever since, which is less well paid than tax, but the subject matter is inherently more interesting I think (if sometimes slightly silly – Colin the Caterpillar anyone? #FreeCuthbert!). I joined the Bar late, but that can be overcome with perseverance and hard work.

Serle Court is a good home to me, as its members have a good work/life balance, don’t take themselves too seriously, and yet are first class advocates and advisers involved in the leading cases across the whole spectrum of business law.

Sophie 

I knew from around the age of 15 that I wanted to become a barrister. I had been lucky enough to be taken to court during work experience at a high-street solicitors arranged by the local comprehensive school that I attended. This was the first interaction I had with anyone from the legal profession. It is fair to say I was met with some scepticism when I told my teacher that I wanted to be a barrister – it was not a usual career choice for pupils at my school. Undeterred, I decided to study law at Cardiff University and graduated with a First. My undergraduate studies, along with a handful of mini-pupillages at a variety of criminal, family and civil sets, cemented my decision to go to the bar and led me to focus my pupillage applications on the commercial/chancery bar. I secured pupillage at a commercial set, and moved from there to Serle Court for a third six pupillage. I have never looked back.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have tenancy at Serle Court. I could not wish for a more friendly and supportive place to work: Members of Chambers and clerks alike are friends as well as colleagues; and their doors are always open if you need advice. I have recently returned to work from maternity leave after having my first child. I value now, more than ever, the flexibility this job provides. I am able to carve out time during my working week to take my son to his weekly swimming lessons, take long summer holidays, and come home every evening for dinner with my family before putting my son to bed. It has been invaluable to have a strong network of female barristers in Chambers, who have shared their experiences of balancing a busy legal practice with parenthood. There is never any pressure from the clerks to take on work - a decision was taken years ago (before I joined Chambers) to make Serle Court a place where people could genuinely achieve a work-life balance. That is still the ethos of Chambers today.

Adil 

I was born and raised in the tropical island of Mauritius. I completed my primary and secondary schooling there. Mauritius in the 1990s was still a developing nation and the standard of education at the time was relatively poor. I remember sharing a classroom with more than 60 other students at primary school and the car park was also the school playground! I was incredibly lucky to earn a state scholarship, which gave me the opportunity to come to the UK for my tertiary education.

When I started to think about my next steps after university, it never occurred to me that someone like me could have a career at the Bar. I had no connections of any sort to anyone in the legal profession and the few barristers I had met at recruitment events sounded and looked very different from me. Although my tutors at university had encouraged me to think about the Bar as an option, I simply assumed that the best Chambers would not seriously consider my application. I therefore joined a City law firm instead.

I interacted with a number of barristers during my time as a solicitor and felt that their job was more exciting than mine. I decided to give the Bar a go and applied for pupillage at a few Chambers. I thought that the worst that could happen was that I would receive some swift rejections. What surprised me was how receptive the Bar was to someone like me. The fact that I came from a background that was very different from many of the people who interviewed me did not make any difference (contrary to the wrong assumption I had made many years ago).

The welcoming and inclusive nature of the Bar is something that I have experienced ever since I joined Serle Court as a pupil and then a tenant. What I hadn’t appreciated in the early stages of my legal career – but now know from my own experience – is that the Bar is all about hard work and meritocracy. Your ethnicity or background does not matter.

Suzanne 

I was born in Burnley, Lancashire and grew up in a council house, I received free school meals as a child, I attended the local state comprehensive school and 80% of my primary school friends did not speak English as a first language.  So that isn’t usually the background you would associate with being a barrister even though I later did my law degrees at Oxford University.  I am proud of my roots in Lancashire and have retained my Northern accent, despite this being unusual – dare I say even sometimes mocked – at the Bar. 

At secondary school inspirational teachers encouraged me to believe in myself.  I was offered a scholarship at a private school to do my A-levels.  It raised my aspirations.  A lot of these were ingrained in me by my father who incentivised me to strive to do better and told me education is the way to bettering your lot in life.

My father was a great inspiration.  He spent his childhood in what has now become Bangladesh after the Partition.  His early years were not privileged and he lived through political insurrection and natural disasters, while ordinary people worked hard to stake out a living and to cope with everyday needs.   He inspired me to pursue what he regarded as truly a ‘noble’ profession – the practice of law.  For him, it was synonymous with making a difference; with changing things for the better for ordinary people; and with giving a voice to those who cannot (or cannot afford) to speak in their own cause.  I knew him only for a short while since he passed away when I was eight years old but his encouragement that I would one day become a lawyer and, specifically, a barrister proved strangely prophetic.

I had every intention of becoming a barrister even as a child. I was inspired by the judgments of Lord Denning MR which gave me a love of advocacy and the power of persuasion through narrative.   But I was discouraged by tutors and contemporaries who said that this might not be the right move for me as someone who did not have a ‘typical’ background.  This was summed up starkly by a well-meaning person who told me frankly: “you are not a white, Anglo-Saxon man of privilege – this is no place for you”.  By this they meant that I did not conform to the types of stereotype (in terms of gender, race, social and economic background) that are traditionally associated with practice at the English Bar.

It was not only issues of gender and race that dissuaded me from pursuing the career of a barrister at the outset but the practical economics of knowing that I had nothing to fall back on in terms of financial support if it did not work out.  The solicitor route offered the financial security of knowing that once I had qualified I would have a regular income.  The offer of a training contract with the law firm Slaughter and May was irresistible.

Having reached partnership, I began to question the type of work I was doing and how I wanted to practice.  I was called upon to do difficult standalone work but this did not necessarily need to be done in a law firm.  A combination of encouraging soundings among peers and a motivation to develop my advocacy practice where this skill set is highly valued prompted me to seek to fulfil my original ambition.  After 15 years practising as a solicitor, I was called to the Bar in 2013 and I now practise EU, competition and regulatory law.