From the classroom to the Bar

Chambers will welcome sixth form students through their doors this week for the Bar Council’s social mobility initiative, Bar Placement Week.

Now in its 10th year, the scheme pairs talented students from socio-economic backgrounds not traditionally associated with the Bar with practising barristers for three days so they can see first-hand what life as a barrister is like. It takes place in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol.

On the final day of the scheme, students attend talks by barristers and/or judges, and receive advocacy training from the Inns of Court College of Advocacy. Prizes are awarded for the best student advocates by a senior member of the Bar.

Andrew Walker QC, Chair of the Bar, said: ‘There is still a perception that to join the Bar you have to come from a wealthy or privileged background. 

‘The 10th anniversary of Bar Placement Week highlights our long term commitment to challenging that misconception, and to reaching out widely with the aim of inspiring students from all backgrounds to consider a career at the Bar. The Bar wants and needs to attract the best talent from across the country, irrespective of socio-economic background, and to do so we need to break down barriers to aspiration and to the attainment of students’ full potential. 

‘One of the best ways of doing this is to give promising students first-hand experience of the life of a barrister.’

The Bar also launched a social mobility campaign online this week, titled ‘I am the Bar’, which also seeks to encourage people with talent and potential to consider the Bar, irrespective of their socio-economic background.

Walker said: ‘The “I am the Bar” campaign is designed to show what individuals from all backgrounds can achieve, to highlight the support and encouragement available, and to explain just how many different paths have been followed by today’s barristers, leading to highly successful careers at the Bar of England and Wales.’

Lord Neuberger, the immediate past President of the Supreme Court, whose 2007 inquiry into background of entrants to the Bar prompted the Bar Council to launch Bar Placement Week, said: ‘The Bar is a profession dedicated to excellence and to justice. That dedication should not be limited to individual commitment on the part of every practising barrister. It is just as important that it extends to the recruitment of future barristers, and that means enabling people with potential, irrespective of background, ethnic group or gender, to have a real opportunity of considering a career at the Bar.’