How To Become A Barrister

My name is Tim Welsh. I'm a university law lecturer, a barrister and a law tutor at City Law Tutors, and I'm going to talk to you about how to find legal jobs. I'm going to talk to you about how to become a barrister.

There are different stages to becoming a barrister. There is an academic stage, a vocational stage and an on-the-job training stage. Now, I'm going to go through each in turn.

The academic stage will start with either a law degree or a graduate diploma in law which is where somebody already has a degree but not in law, converts that non-law degree into a qualifying law degree. The law degree, the LLB or BA if you go to Oxford or sometimes Cambridge, is a three-year law degree course and typically involving taking 7 legal subjects. The 7 legal subjects are also required to be taken on the graduate diploma in a law course and are typically land law and the law of trust, contract law and tort law, criminal law and public administrative law and EU law, as well as knowing a bit about being in this legal system.

The vocational stage of training as a barrister will involve taking a course called the Bar Professional Training Course, previously known as the Bar Vocational Training Course. The course is typically taken over one year or they can be taken part-time over two years. The course requires you to study knowledge-based subjects such as litigation or evidence, as well as studying skill-based subjects such as advocacy or drafting.

You must pass through the course before you can go on to the next stage which would mean being called to the bar and going into the on-the-job training. On the job training for barristers involves doing what's known as pupillage. Pupillage is typically split into 2 six-month periods.

In the first six, you will typically follow a barrister around court or assist a barrister in doing things like drafting legal documents, writing legal pinions or attending conferences with solicitors and/or the lay client. In the second six, you will typically have your own practicing rights. You will be given work by solicitors and you have to go to the court and file your own cases.

After completing both six-month periods of the twelve-month pupillage, you will then be given a practicing certificate. This gives you rights in all the courts of the country and you are then a fully fledged practicing barrister. To find out more about becoming a barrister or any of the stages of studying to become a barrister, you can visit our website at www.

citylawtutors.co.uk.

City law tutors regularly train barristers in all the stages aforementioned and therefore, we can assist you in doing the same. .