Bank Holiday round-up
The top legal affairs news stories from the long weekend
Striking barristers to meet new Justice Secretary [Independent]
Policing anti-monarchy protestors properly ‘not a hard job’, insists barrister behind blank-placard experiment [LBC News]
Santander hired law firm to investigate bankers’ strip club trip [Financial Times]
What did the public really think about lockdown law? [Prospect Magazine]
Greenpeace takes legal action over EU’s ‘green’ label for gas and nuclear [Reuters]
Veteran, lawyer and teacher among nearly 200 recipients of Queen’s Birthday Honours to be invited to state funeral [Sky News]
King Charles III set to change law to stop non-working royals from acting as official stand-in [iNews]
Truss plan to axe sugar tax runs into legal and parliamentary hitches [The Guardian]
The lawless world of crypto scams [Financial Times]
“I’d be interested to hear from criminal barristers involved in recruiting pupils. Have application numbers dropped? Are pupillages being left unfilled? And who is taking them: people who are financially independent, or are ordinary people still applying?’ [Legal Cheek comments]
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5 Comments
FFS
Re: Crime pupillages – this Bar Council Pupillage Gateway report from 2021 states:
‘All practice areas saw an increase in the number of pupillages advertised to start in 2021/22, compared to those advertised to start in 2020/21. Family saw the largest increase (+34.1 per cent) followed by crime (+32.5 per cent).’
Why advertise more 32.5% MORE crime pupillages if the Criminal Bar is ‘dying’??? These pupillages also have to be funded by people in chambers, so how can there be additional funded pupillages if criminal barristers are apparently living in ‘poverty’??? Again, are these positions going unfulfilled and how many applicants are applying for them???
Think critically kids. The utterly hysterical, hyperbolic ranting you read on Twitter by some in the legal profession may not be an accurate reflection of what’s really going on in the world.
https://www.barcouncil.org.uk/uploads/assets/016ace0e-f689-411a-a98ef22a3679ffcc/Pupillage-Gateway-report-2021.pdf
SSF
Good of you to link to the full report.
“In 2020/21, the number of pupillages advertised decreased by 14.1 per cent compared to the previous year. The BSB reported a 35 percent decrease in the number of pupillages registered in 2020 compared to the previous year.”
A post-Covid rebound rather than a big actual increase no?
Jk
The issue isn’t that people don’t want to be criminal barristers from the start, it’s that they a lot want to quit a year or two in. If a Chambers wants to secure its survival, it needs at least some new blood coming through. Hiring pupils is one way of doing that, albeit now more pupils need to be hired to secure a long term tennant due to the attrition rate. A criminal pupil might, for example, get a 25k award with 5k in guaranteed earnings. Across a Chambers that could be £300/member. I think the question is more whether its ethical to take on a criminal pupil, knowing there’s a good chance they won’t be able to survive, rather than whether it is viable for a Chambers to do so.
Pole Position
I landed some of best cases in strip clubs.
Anonymous
What does the FT article say?
Comments are closed.