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Adam Fellows considers the discrepancies between pupil earnings, and asks whether the Bar should bring back unfunded pupillages
At Legal Cheek, the matter of pupillages has been getting a lot of attention recently. Two posts by jobless Bar graduate OccupyTheInns - one about ways of showing dissatisfaction with the lack of pupillages and training contracts, and a subsequent piece about how this could be rectified - have both received some fairly damning comments.
I do not agree with the posts myself. However, I am enormously sympathetic with the thrust of them, and it is easy to see that Bar students, and those still awaiting pupillage, feel that the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board (BSB) have given up on resolving the issue of oversupply of graduates and undersupply of pupillages. But it is a complex matter.
Which is why when I saw the report about the increase in the Wilberforce Chambers pupillage award - from £48,000 to £65,000 - I knew exactly what I was going to write about this week. The reasoning behind it is that the set, quite rightly, wants to attract the best brains to supplement its current members. Yet the amount stuck firmly in my mind.