Life at the bar

I was a student for many years before coming to Blackstone: as an undergraduate, PhD student, and finally law conversioner. Migrating from academia, I was attracted to Blackstone partly because of the strong intellectual profile of its members and their interests outside the law. Within the law, Blackstone also seemed to offer the very best of what was going: high quality work of enormous variety.

This impression solidified during my pupillage. I circulated between four supervisors during the course of the year, along with my three fellow pupils. Each supervisor was a specialist in one of chambers’ three principal practice areas: public, commercial and employment law; and each seat offered an entirely different experience. Sliding from one practice area to another was very useful in allowing me to develop transferable skills and generalised understanding. But most of all, the scope of the work was exhilarating – ranging from deep and difficult human rights questions to high value commercial disputes, to subtle regulatory matters, involving intricate problems of construction. From the beginning, I was allowed to feel an active participant in my supervisors’ cases, producing first drafts of pleadings and skeletons in matters that were often complex and almost always interesting.

Pupillage at Blackstone is demanding. But it is rewarding. And Blackstone is an overwhelmingly friendly place to spend what is in some ways a difficult year. I found people unfailingly supportive and sympathetic, and the working hours eminently civilized, rarely going beyond 6.30pm or intruding into the weekend. I was never conscious of the slightest degree of competitiveness or ill feeling among the four pupils (all of whom were ultimately taken on). Most importantly, perhaps, I had confidence, even in times of anxiety and despondency, that my tenancy application would be judged purely on merit and subjected to a rigorous and transparent process. That is not to be taken for granted.

Blackstone is also terrifically supportive professionally, both during pupillage and beyond. It recognises that it has a responsibility to train pupils, and not just assess them. Day to day work for pupil supervisors is therefore supplemented by very useful and focused advocacy training, and by scheduled and structured written exercises. At the end of it, those who are taken on at Blackstone are lowered gently into practice. During a four-week ‘shadowing’ period, they follow junior members of chambers to court or tribunal, to get a taste for how things work at the bottom end, and this is followed by three months of ‘mentoring’, during which a senior member of chambers runs an eye over any work sent out under a new tenant’s own name. The system is well designed for building confidence and providing comfort.

I very much enjoyed my pupillage year, despite the inevitable rigours. And I am delighted to be staying on.