Missed out on pupillage first time round? You’re not alone
New research by the Bar Council finds that most aspiring barristers have to go through more than one application cycle before securing pupillage, a finding likely to resonate with students navigating one of the most competitive entry routes into the legal profession.
According to the Bar Council’s latest pupil survey, just 4 in 10 candidates (37%) secure pupillage in their first application cycle, while nearly half (48%) succeed after two or three attempts. A further 16% require four or more cycles before finally landing a place.
The report also highlights that the pupillage process is becoming increasingly drawn out, noting that securing pupillage appears to have taken longer for the 2026 cohort compared to those in 2025. That comes as little surprise given how tough applicants find the process. A striking 90% described pupillage recruitment as either quite or very challenging, while just 10% said it was relatively straightforward.
When asked how the pupillage recruitment process might be improved, more than three-quarters of respondents (76%) called for better feedback, while 52% said chambers should at least provide a response to unsuccessful applications. Additionally, nearly a third (32%) of pupils called for greater access to networking opportunities, highlighting the importance of connections in an already competitive process.
For those who do manage to secure pupillage, however, the picture is broadly positive. More than eight in ten pupils (83%) said their overall pupillage experience was positive, including 56% who described it as “very positive”.
But beneath those headline figures sit some notable disparities. Disabled pupils were more than twice as likely to report a negative experience (30% compared to 13% of non-disabled pupils), with neurodivergent pupils and those with mental health conditions also reporting more negative experiences overall.
Encouragingly, confidence in the Bar as a long-term career appears to be improving. Nearly three-quarters of pupils (72%) believe the Bar is a viable career, marking a 10% increase on last year.
Yet the data hints at something of a “honeymoon phase”, with attitudes becoming less positive as pupils progress from their first six to their second six. Among those in their second six, 46% reported high stress levels, compared to 21% of first six pupils. They were also more likely to report exposure to bullying and harassment (40% compared to 11%) and less likely to view the Bar as a viable career (36% compared to 75%).
Work-life balance was the most commonly cited reason for doubting whether a career at the Bar is viable. These concerns were especially pronounced among women and disabled pupils. Working patterns may offer some explanation. The median working week sits between 41 and 50 hours, with 43% of pupils working more than 50 hours and just 21% working fewer than 41 hours.
The research also highlights continued disparities in earnings and access to the most lucrative pupillages opportunities. Pupils who attended Oxbridge are 15 times more likely to secure awards of £60,000 or more than those from other universities (61% compared to 4%). And, unsurprisingly, pay also varies sharply by practice area: around 83% of pupils in commercial practice reported awards of £60,000 or more, compared to 70% in chancery and just 7% in other areas.
There are, however, signs of progress on gender pay, with the gap in top awards narrowing slightly this year, as 29% of men reported receiving £60,000 or more compared to 17% of women.
The research was based on responses from 143 out of the total population of 600 pupils.
For aspiring barristers, the message is clear: don’t be discouraged by rejection. The road to pupillage can be a long one, and for most barristers it involves multiple application rounds before success. Persistence remains a key part of making it to the Bar.
Bar Council Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said:
The Bar is a wonderful profession, as demonstrated by many of the positive responses we received to this survey. It’s vital that our junior colleagues and aspiring barristers are supported along the pathway to and into the Bar. The Bar Council seeks to do this. […] Crucially, being a barrister is an excellent, important and rewarding career.
Bigger story here may be that 4/10 get pupillage first time. Not bad at all for such a prize. Commercial Bar is highest status and most well paid place in law.
No it’s not. Partners at elite firms earn far more than commercial KCs.
true but they will still rely on KCs for advice and strategy and there is more scope for work life balance at senior self employed bar (for those who want it). Horses for courses (Aintree or Cheltenham?)
How do you know that?
Best paid does not equal highest status. Every area law has its stars and the best criminal silks have as high a status as the best commercial silks. Same with other areas of law.
London pupillage competition is getting out of hand. Not sure how you’re supposed to compete as a recent graduate from a non Russell Group university. No feedback ever offered of course, so you’re effectively shooting in the dark unless you’re fortunate enough to have a mentor.
I think incoming bar students need to be told up front to have other career plans, not as a plan B but as plan A. Waiting years between pupillage cycles is a hidden cost of the bar. You pay with years of your life and hesitate to apply for permanent roles elsewhere on the off-chance that, after months of waiting for application results and interviews, you might actually be successful.
Can we stop with the “shooting in the dark unless you’re fortunate enough to have a mentor” and “I think incoming bar students need to be told up front to have other career plans” etc? EVERYONE who is serious about going to the bar has this information at their fingertips. Barristers give up huge amounts of time to provide that information. At least five of them have written whole books about getting pupillage. Lots of information online as well and everything free. Universities, Inns of Court, Bar Council, specialist bar associations, chambers, and other organisations put together events, panels, Q&As, mentoring schemes, CV clinics, etc., ALL THE TIME. No-one applies to be a barrister on the basis of “waiting years between pupillage cycles” in limbo and in the dark without doing anything else. Stop treating adults going for one of the most independent and individualistic jobs there is as little lost children. This is insulting both to barristers who put in so much time into this and frankly to the students who are well capable of doing a bit of research.
I don’t have the latest figures, but only a couple of years ago there were reports of 3000 applications through pupillage gateway for ~450 spots.
I’m not aware of specific London figures, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it’s hundreds of applications per spot. All the free online advice in the world isn’t going to help someone to know how they could improve if in a list of 200 applicants they were only the 70th most suitable for the role. At what point should they give up on dreams of the London bar and go elsewhere? How would they know when that time is?
It’s an oversaturated market, by a matter of pure statistics most people will fail. I’m sorry but I don’t buy into this pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality, and find it to be very outdated. I would be very curious to know approximately when you obtained pupillage if you would be willing to say.
If you’re the 70th most suitable candidate out of 200, the reality is that you almost certainly cannot improve to the standard for that particular set, but you may be a fit for a less competitive set.
I would love to have played for Manchester United and led England out in the World Cup this year. The reality is, no matter how hard or much I trained, no matter what feedback my football coaches gave me, and no matter how much I dreamed of that, it was simply never going to happen.
At the commercial sets when you interview candidates, it is abundantly clear where the talent is, and you would be surprised how many stellar CVs are bad in interview. They may have got great grades through working hard, but they lack the speed of thought or ability to assimilate and parse information well enough to obtain pupillage at that set. It is however very rare to have someone excel in interview who does not have excellent academics (at Oxbridge or Russell Group). Those may be super grades all over, but it may also be good grades generally with a few prizes chucked in to show excellence. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if you weren’t able to beat people and play the game at university to some degree, that people who were able to do that end up beating you again professionally.
This is also a self-employed career and you need your own drive and get up and go to make it work, even at the large commercial sets there are the haves and the have nots. Anyone with that drive will be able to go and find and speak to barristers who are out there giving up their time to talk about getting into the profession.
Now people may not like the fact that if you’re simply not talented enough, then there is nothing you can do about it, but unfortunately, like so many things in life, that is just how things are.
You won’t know if you’re 70th out of 200, which was the entire point.
The point was made that no feedback is offered and candidates can feel like they’re applying blind. The counterpoint was made that resources are available. The answer to that was that those resources don’t help an applicant to know when to give up because the process is so opaque.
I also find your assumption that non Oxbridge and non Russell Group students could simply never compete to begin with to be quite condescending. Plenty of people weren’t groomed for a career at the bar from their teenage years and took a different path in life to get here. It is also quite an unrealistic notion that universities with limited spaces on courses would accept everyone who is good enough, mathematically it cannot happen. There must be thousands that fall by the wayside.
Finally, meaning no disrespect to them, I think you’ll find quite a few judges have academic careers that would not cut it by the standards you’re espousing. The late Sir Robert Megarry attended Cambridge but left with a Third-Class degree in Law, for example.
The process is no more opaque than any other profession. I am only talking about the highly competitive end of the Commercial Bar, I cannot speak to the rest. At those sets, you simply are not going to be good enough if you didn’t get into a Russell Group/Oxbridge university – or if you didn’t then you should have done so well at your non-RG university to then get a Masters place at somewhere better. That is no more condescending that saying Thomas Tuchel isn’t spending his time in the Conference league looking to a striker to pair up with Kane.
Many applicants simply, in my experience, lack the self-awareness of where they stand vis a vis others. I always knew I wasn’t good enough to be a Premier League footballer, I learnt to leave those dreams behind.
I also wonder how on earth any applicant who can’t deal with the lack of feedback (though most sets do provide feedback) will actually be successful in practice. If you think pupillage applications are hard and stressful wait until you actually enter the real world of the Bar. Life is unfair, but to wish it otherwise is pointless.
The Bar bends over backwards to make itself open. The chances are there. There are limited places and, I am afraid, the majority will never get it because there are people better than them.
It is easy for people to tell themselves that they didn’t get it because they weren’t groomed from the cradle to rise to the ranks of KC. The reality is, if you go and actually meet the people in these sets, the majority were not groomed. They didn’t have connections. What they did have was talent and work ethic – the first one is necessary, the second one required to be able to compete. It is however a convenient excuse for applicants to tell themselves. I have never heard a failed applicant say ‘you know what I just wasn’t good enough’ – but yet that is more often than not the case.
As for the silly comparison about exam results in the good old days, we all know that times have changed and that the academics we now seek reflect current standards not those which are outdated.
I strongly disagree with the notion, often left in the comments to articles like this, that the best, most capable, or most intelligent, candidates come from Oxbridge. What they tend to be is candidates who have done best in the lottery of life. They’ve received the best teaching possible, have the most networking and experience opportunities, often (although, granted, not always) come from especially stable households etc. Naturally, they have therefore had every opportunity to present their full ability.
Conversely, many very intelligent and capable people are born into difficult backgrounds, have to attend poor performing schools, and have every barrier in their way to success.
To suggest that simply because someone hasn’t had X work experience, or hasn’t received Y grades, or hasn’t been shown how to do Z on an application form, means they are a less capable candidate to be a barrister smacks of being entirely removed from reality. Anyone with a natural ability with key barrister attributes (e.g. effective debating, quickly assimilating information and spotting issues, spontaneous rebuttal etc) has the potential, with quality training, to be a capable and successful practitioner.
Of course, grades and work experience can be a good indicator of academic ability and commitment to the Bar, but we cannot place so much reliance on this when we are so aware of how unlevel the playing field is between candidates, often through no fault of their own.
Accordingly, instead of long application forms that require you to demonstrate stellar grades, mooting/debating/shadowing experience, a list of scholarships etc to stand out and have a shot at interview, we should instead focus pupillage recruitment assessment on a mix of written and oral tasks that afford all candidates an equal opportunity to demonstrate their natural abilities. I wouldn’t advocate for disregarding the above-mentioned accolades/grades entirely from the process, but we do need to do more at the Bar to strike a reasonable balance between wanting ‘the best’ and recognising that sometimes ‘the best’ is a diamond in the rough, requiring polishing and buffing before they can really shine to their full potential.
There are several problems with this. Most decent chambers get 300-400 applications. Barristers are self employed -and therefore every hour spent dealing with people applications is an hour that they cannot bill for. Chambers do not have the facilities to set assess and mark a written exam for 400 students.. Also a single legal problem assessed does not necessarily mean that person will be a successful barrister.
Furthermore whilst I understand the complaint about the emphasis on academic success. The reality is that sustained academic success is an objective measure of intellectual ability.
That is not to say that people who do not have and have not had the opportunity to have that sustained academic success will not have the intellectual capacity to be a successful barrister. Many of them will particularly those applying to the bar.
But the problem is that law is inherently conservative so it’s easier to go with what you know rather than take the risk with an untested candidate.
Aspiring London barristers need to get down the pub and meet the clerks , just a thought.
When I started out (over 10 years ago) this would have been GOOD news.
The figures back then were about 1 pupillage to every 10 BVC graduates, and on the course we were actually told that most of us would never get to be practising barristers.
The report doesn’t say that 4/10 aspiring barristers get pupillage first time. It says that 4/10 of the current pupils who responded to the survey got pupillage first time. What a misleading headline…
Invariable every single statistic that we really on in life from the everyday mundane to government policy decision making are based on surveys.
Surveys are not the issue, the quality is and based on the numbers of those surveyed, this one seems decent enough.