Pass Me the Money: A Guide to Funding for Aspiring Barristers

For the slower of you this post's title comes from the 2001 hit from the once be-plastered oracle of popular rap music, Nelly, entitled 'Ride With Me'. Money is an unfortunate pre-requisite to breaking the Bar: BPTCs and GDLs are depressingly expensive and the frightening statistics for Pupillage (under 25% of those undertaking the Bar course secure Pupillage) offer little hope or chance of recouping much, if any, of the thousands you shell out for a course. But enough of this: any more and I'll start weeping at the keyboards when I tot up my loans for my undergraduate degree and the costs I am about to incur. This is a post on how one may fund either the conversion or BPTC year.

Firstly, I'll direct you to the less obvious source of information: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/ChoicesAfterYouGraduate/DG_10012463 

This well equipped page by the Government offers a wealth of links to sites where you can search for grants available nationally and locally. They are the kinds of grants with long, improbable names that no one else seems to have heard of or bothered exploring; so I would urge you to invest time (the online search facilities  take what seems a couple of years for the results to appear) in looking at them. They may well, if applied to with the bizarre deadlines in mind (look at them well in advance), prove to be very fruitful indeed. If not, then all you've lost is a couple of hours on Facebook.

Secondly, I direct you to the more obvious Natwest Professional Loan Scheme. I'll warn you now, though: the interest rates if you aren't able to pay the amount off almost immediately after qualifying are terrifying. When I asked the lady on the phone what I'd end up paying back in total for a loan of £10, 000 the sum was so shocking I developed an immediate case of diarrhea. Do be careful.

Far less frightening is the Professional Career Development Loan offered by Barclays and the Co-operative. Although you can borrow only £10, 000, rather than Natwest's £25, 000, the interest rates are less likely to have you excreting through the eye of a needle.

I'll direct you now to the most obvious, and most useful, source of funding: the Inns of Court scholarships. The Inns of Court, if you aren't aware, look after barrister's and would-be barristers: feeding them, watering them, providing parties, lectures, various shows, gardens in which to sit, invaluable advice, mooting (debating), advocacy (preparing to be mouthy in court) training and, most importantly, money. But that is not to say that they part with their funds easily: you must impress at a panel interview and convince them that you are worth investing in; that you will, one day, make a barrister.

These scholarships do more than help see through your legal studies; they offer you and prospective chambers reassurance that you have what it takes to make the Bar; such scholarships sit very prettily on your CV.

I am well-placed to offer a snap shot of the scholarship application process having been through it only a year ago. And you can find a diary of the application and interview process on the next post.

Well, I thought you'd like a break. Cup of tea? Biscuit? Strong whisky, perhaps?

In the Beginning

I am not middle class, from Oxbridge or moneyed or from a family of legal practitioners. What I am, however, is fairly bright, persevering and bent on pursuing a career at the Bar of England and Wales. And what this blog is, is exactly that: a blog of my experiences as I pursue the kind of career that has eluded my family and most that come from my kind of background. Because, regardless of what anybody tells you, stereotypes and misconceptions exist for a reason: they are- although we do what we can to dispel them- to greater and lesser degrees, true. The Bar is still, it appears, dominated by white, middle class, if ageing, men. And the court is still, from my (albeit limited) experience filled with the kind of voices that we'd expect to hear in an Austen novel, all plummy vowels, and a silver spoon protruding from some orifice or other. But all this is sounding a little too Richard Ashcroft working class rant for my liking. There is nothing wrong with being white, middle class, mature or male- just as there is nothing wrong with being black, working class, female or still in a gym slip. What I'm posing is merely a proposition: is gender, class, background still a bar to the Bar? And, even if those things are irrelevant, do I, even then, have what it takes to make it?

What I can promise to make, though, is this blog which will offer practical advice on and experience in  how to- or, rather, how not to- make - or break- the Bar.