Exclusive: Promptly disinvites them
As if the pursuit for pupillage wasn’t stressful enough, London’s 2 Bedford Row was forced to revoke a number of interview offers after some wannabe barristers received invites by mistake.
The criminal set, which takes on four pupils a year, notified a number of candidates by email this week that they’d been shortlisted for a first-round interview. However, as one source explained to Legal Cheek, the email failed to mention the date and time of the interview.
For some, unfortunately, the mixture of elation and confusion was shortlived. A number of pupil hopefuls received a follow-up email with the rather tantalising subject heading “Revised Interview Offer”, only to be informed that the original offer had been revoked and their application rejected.
A spokesperson for 2 Bedford Row told Legal Cheek: “In 2019, 2 Bedford Row withdrew from the Pupillage Gateway in order to manage our own online portal with a third party providing IT support. On the 27th March 2019, we identified that a ‘pro forma / test’ email was sent out to a number of applicants in error. We have been working hard to try and identify how this happened.”
They continued:
“In the meantime, we have personally contacted all those affected in order to convey our sincere apologies.”
Needless to say, 2 Bedford Row’s email blunder didn’t go down well with wannabe barristers. “I’m surprisingly upset”, wrote one applicant on the website The Student Room. “I could have taken a straight rejection, but an interview offer, followed by a ‘sorrreeeee’ email half a day later was rather overwhelming!” While another, rather optimistically, commented: “Could that mean that those who didn’t get a reject are still in the running lol”.
This, however, isn’t the first time a chambers has fired off interview invites in error.
In 2016, 5 Essex Court incorrectly informed a group of applicants they’d successfully secured interview spots, only to cancel them hours later blaming a technical “glitch”.
