These are wonderful events at universities that happen in the Autumn term. Law firms pitch up at your university for the day with a stall and enough pens to keep you out of W. H. Smith for life. There are many varieties of pens on offer from ball points to fountain pens to highlighters to rainbow highlighters (these are many different coloured highlighters in one pen) and then a plethora of other indispensible items such as alarm clocks to small diaries to mugs. The other indispensible items to be found at the law fair are two usually expensive, but a law fairs free, publications: Chambers Student Guide and the Pupillage Handbook. Pick up both, even though they will put your back out. Each contains invaluable advice for all elements of your path to the Bar.
But apart from the stationary, and an alarm clock whose mechanism you never be able to fathom, there are people, real live people, working in the law who can offer you advice and if you are very lucky, or pushy, work experience. So do make the effort to talk to everybody you can there: you never know what will come of it.
Of course work experience for aspiring barristers isn't called work experience but, instead, mini-pupillage. Mini-pupillage is when you spend a couple of days to a week in a barrister's chambers. You will sit on in conferences, go to court, read skeleton arguments and perhaps, if you are again very lucky, get taken for a coffee.
Word of advice now. The night before you begin mini-pupillage go for a walk and make sure you know how to get there. There is nothing as embarrassing as being late on your very first day. Wear a dark suit. Chambers' websites do normally dictate a dress code for mini-pupils but that dress code doesn't normally deviate from a dark, sober suit. Also wear comfortable shoes. On my first mini-pupillage I spent a significant amount of time ducking in and out of toilets putting plasters on my bleeding, blistered feet. If anything can be gained from my misfortune, it is that you and your feet can be spared it.
On the morning that you arrive you will be directed to the clerks. Clerks are very important. They are not receptionist. They are not diary handlers. They are not tea ladies. They are the men and women in whose hands your early career rests. They can make your career by ensuring that work comes your way. Do be nice to them.
The clerks will tell you who you will be with that day. It is rare that you will be with one barrister for an entire day, let alone for your entire mini-pupillage. You will be shunted from tenant to tenant and, as I found on one mini-pupillage, from court to court.
On this particular mini-pupillage my A-Z was invaluable: I would never have made any court sittings without it. Even with it, I still had to ask every body from school children to the person next to me on the tube (yes I broke the unspoken rule of silence on the tube) where whichever County Court was. Buy an A-Z. And always leave as much time as you can to get from one place to the next.
Conferences are tricky. Conferences are where a barrister will meet either in person or talk on the phone with clients or other legal professionals. During a telephone conference shut up. During a conference-conference, either video or in person, acknowledge those attending either with a handshake or smile. Whilst you do not want to try and start running the show, neither do you want to be seen as socially inept or, worse, just plain rude. Don't start offering advice during the conference: your opinion is totally irrelevant not to mention, I imagine, totally uninformed. Remember even though you aren't affiliated with the chambers you are, for your time with them, to a certain extent, representing them. One of the aspects of conferences that I enjoyed most was the biscuits; although the quality of these differs from chambers to chambers.
Take notes- though not during the conferences. Chambers will ask you at the beginning of your mini to sign a confidentiality agreement so I really don't think that clients will appreciate an upstart in a suit noting down the intricacies of their private matters. make a couple of notes afterwards (that don't mention names) so you can talk about what you learnt during your mini at pupillage and scholarship interviews.
At the end of your mini-pupillage say thank you to those very important people I mentioned. What do you mean "who?" The clerks.
Then leave and take yourself and your blistered feet back to your hotel room or friend's back room and pass out, exhausted, at 6pm in the evening.
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