Two for Two

As a boy I regularly enjoyed going out at the weekend with friends, armed with only a tub of maggots and a rod, and spending the day casting out into the river and seeing what I could catch. It is crucial that you use the right bait to reel in that big fish which you are after.

Thus I come to the point of this post, and stretching the fishing metaphor to almost breaking point, I am pleased to say that I have secured two mini-pupillages for next year, one which is listed in band three of Chambers and Partners UK for crime in London, and one which is listed in band one. Although I have done quite a few minis I am now concentrating on doing criminal law minis to prove my commitment (although maybe being poor and impoverished would show my commitment better?). It is also so that I can meet the members of chambers I am intending to apply to, and more importantly they can meet me.

Perhaps the most satisfying part of this process has been that I only sent out two CV's and both came back with an offer, so I obviously 'used the right bait'.

All the best
BoB

The Barristers

To start this post I quickly want to mention what an absolute God send the BBC i-player service is.  This alone is worth the licence fee that most of the press having been bleating about following the Brand/Ross scandal.  The availability of this wondrous piece of technology allowed me to attend a poker evening last night, and watch the program this afternoon.

Right down to business.  I agree with barboy that there could have been a bigger concentration of the difficulties and bad parts of training to be a barrister.  It was, however, a fairly entertaining and informative program for those who know nothing about the bar.  For those of us who are already aspiring to be barristers and have half an ounce of sense (although this may possibly be an oxymoron), it didn't really proffer much in the way of new information.

I thought that the BVC students that they chose to follow were a little uninteresting and may have been chosen to give the impression of the Bar being a much more 'right on' and diverse profession than most people would traditionally think.  I was particularly unimpressed by the single male that was chosen, especially when he stated 'I mooted once at University, but think that it is better to do it here in front of real judges'.  If he had mooted more at University he might not have been so bad and lost on the night.

I think that it would be interesting if the next episode is mainly about pupillage to give a real insight into what to expect, with maybe a bit of a side focus on the very junior end of the profession.  We shall see soon enough.

All the best BoB