Recruitment

RECRUITMENT

Until about 1980 recruitment in chambers was entirely haphazard. Obtaining pupillage involved getting someone you knew (often a university tutor) to write a letter to someone they knew. A number of those taken on in the early 1970s arrived at Brick Court after their pupil master in another set (usually 4 Essex Court or 1 Hare Court) spoke to one of Brick Court juniors about the pupil their set had been unwilling to take on. The Inns helped in providing a network of contacts but selection on merit was something of the future. There was no pupillage committee or tenancy committee and no one was quite sure how decisions were made. That meant that the quality of pupils was at times a bit mixed. One lady who had been in pupillage for few months was asked to chase up law reports containing the other side’s list of authorities. One was “1979 2 Ll R”. Rather than searching for the Lloyd’s Reports, she apologetically said that it did not appear there was a copy of the Liberian Law Reports in chambers.

Nor was it always obvious which of the juniors were squatters waiting to hear about their prospects and which were actually tenants. The traditional pupillage fee of 100 guineas had not formally been abolished but by the 1970s no one asked for it, at least in 1 Brick Court. Perhaps it was still a courtesy to offer. But there was certainly no remuneration for pupils. However, a number of the juniors in the early 1980s were accustomed to pay their pupils for work they used.

Members of chambers usually had two pupils each. By the late 1970s there were about eighteen pupils in chambers. Physical space was limited and the lack of space was seen as a bar to taking new tenants. “We’d love to take all of you,” Burley would say, possibly not meaning it literally, “but there’s no space for anyone.” Pupils in the late 1970s and early 1980s who did not stay in chambers included Peter Roth, Paul Morgan, Stephen Males, Sue Carr and Robin Knowles all of whom went on to successful careers and to become High Court judges. Pupils were often asked to do a range of non-legal tasks such as visiting their pupil master’s home to pick up forgotten papers. The last day of Richard Aikens’ pupillage involved taking Bob Alexander’s young son to watch the cricket at Lord’s when Bob became otherwise engaged at short notice. In due course Andrew Popplewell had to spend the first

day of his pupillage with Richard assisting Richard’s heavily pregnant wife move house whilst Richard did an arbitration. Others sought to look after their pupils in different way. Hilary Heilbron was on occasion required to give female pupils sartorial advice. When George Leggatt was Jonathan Hirst’s pupil it was not entirely clear why his wardrobe was regarded inappropriate, but at Christmas Hirst provided a large cheque and told George to go out and buy himself some “proper black brogues”.

Anecdotes on the bar pupils’ grapevine suggested that in many other chambers pupils were poorly treated, something that certainly never happened at Brick Court, where the warm atmosphere which pervaded chambers generally made pupillage a happy experience. One set of chambers had a chambers tea every day where pupils poured the tea and stood lining the walls whilst the members chatted to each other. A pupil in other chambers fell out with his pupil master after being sent off to deliver a pistachio ice cream to another member of the bar. Although not explained to the pupil, this involved a private joke. When pistachio was unavailable, the pupil took chocolate ice cream instead, which (unbeknown to him) spoiled the joke and led to a massive row with his pupil master who subsequently blackballed the pupil from tenancy.

It was Richard Aikens who pioneered a structured system of pupillage applications in the early 1980s. Paul Walker developed it in the late 1980s; Brick Court being more or less the only set at that time to select for mini pupillage and to require a five-day assessed mini pupillage as part of chambers’ admission procedures. Mini pupillage was not merely an opportunity to assess candidates, it also gave candidates an opportunity to see the inside of chambers at first hand, and to that extent also presented a marketing opportunity. Thus Roger Masefield was, during mini pupillage, prised away from the embrace of another magic circle set where he was intending to go (whilst Tom Adam was responsible for this particular coup, it nearly proved disastrous because Tom thought Roger wanted pupillage for the wrong year). It was said that almost all those who did mini pupillage ended the week wanting to come to Brick Court, as against a rival set where almost everyone who had done mini pupillage was put off going there.

With the structured system came the need for a pupillage manager. This role was originally filled by a rather formidable character who was

not shy of expressing her own (unauthorised) views of the candidates and their prospects of success, including on occasion to the candidates themselves. In 2001 the role was taken over by Lyana Peniston who has remained with chambers since and whose rather more approachable and user-friendly manner has welcomed scores of pupils and pupillage candidates over the years.

The best candidates were invited to final interview on a Saturday, then in July, where they were required to present an application for leave to appeal from the Court of Appeal. The favourite problem was a bills of exchange case, Williamson v Rider. 121 Danny Jowell was one of those who failed to make the cut for pupillage after being unable to tell the difference between a fixed and determinable future time under s83 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, and it took some years to tempt him from other chambers. Curiously the standard assessed mini pupillage piece of written work was also a bills of exchange problem,122 the intention being to choose an area of law where those who had done a non-law first degree might not be disadvantaged.

In 1989 the tenancy committee was set up to improve the quality of decision making when deciding whether to offer pupils tenancies. This led to the creation of structured advocacy exercises for the pupils. Initially modest in output, the initial exercise used was an old Paul Walker summary judgment application about a racing yacht where defective woven roving meant that boat failed its class certification. The Olympic yachtsman who was the plaintiff, Glyn Charles, sadly drowned whilst racing some years after the exercise was first used. Charles Hollander took over pupillage when Paul left to take up an academic post in New Zealand in 1994, and the advocacy exercises mushroomed into monthly outings, mostly consisting of Charles Hollander’s triumphs and disasters in court revived, with security for costs, interlocutory injunctions, freezing injunctions, an Employment Appeal Tribunal case, and leave to appeal hearings.

Most recognised that this was an effective and transparent system but there were a few glitches. Alec Haydon sought to complete his certification after completing six months’ pupillage but was told by the

121 [1963] 1QB 89 122 Based on Durham Fancy Goods v Michael Jackson [1968] 2QB 839

Bar Council that his pupil master was not registered and there was a brief suggestion that the pupillage might be void. A wag suggested that in that case he should be obliged to return his pupillage award. Simon Salzedo nearly left for other chambers after being told by the then chair of the tenancy committee, Jonathan Hirst, in one of the sometimes brutal Easter pupillage assessments that “all was not lost yet”. One unsuccessful candidate claimed that one of the interviewers fell asleep during his first interview, an allegation that met with an absolutely outraged denial from the member of chambers in question. Another pupil burst into tears during an advocacy exercise when reprimanded for referring to the patent court with a long rather than a short “a”. For one mini pupillage interview the wrong candidate was brought up for interview and the error was not appreciated until almost the end of the interview. When the member of chambers collecting him said “John Smith?” the candidate must have thought the interviewer was introducing himself. Another pupil in chambers who had been wooed by many chambers told us that during the recruitment season he had ignored a message to call 10 Downing Street as a practical joke by his flatmate. It turned out that Cherie Blair was trying to recruit him to her chambers.

By the late 1980s chambers was offering pupillage awards. These soon grew in size as the commercial sets sought to attract candidates by outdoing each other in the size of their awards. Trying to offer more than your rivals had the potential to lead to a spiral, and to some extent did in later years, although chambers’ strategy was simply to be competitive. Brick Court was always happy to compete with its rivals for pupils on a level playing field. Others took a different view. One year, two Brick Court final interview candidates were made pupillage offers by another set of chambers. They made the offers ten days before Brick Court’s final interview Saturday and in each case said they would keep open the offers for nine days.

In the mid 1990s the Bar Council introduced the standard pupillage application system, which went through a number of names before now being called the Pupillage Portal, but it was never then compulsory and many chambers, particularly the Chancery sets, declined to participate in order to pick off strong candidates early and avoid a level playing field. The portal had some early glitches itself. Initially a candidate could

apply to up to twenty sets and there was no limit on the number of offers that could be held on to before accepting one. Thus in the first year one person received fourteen offers and made his decision right at the end of the fourteen day window, which meant that none of the fourteen sets that had made him an offer could move on to their next choice candidate until almost the end of the fourteen day window, with the result that much of the system ground to a halt.

Many professions offer one form or another of work experience or placements. The Commercial bar is not very suitable for that purpose because of the level of detail and large number of files. Fledgling lawyers in mini pupillage were often excited by spending time seeing how what they had learned at university was put into practice, and speaking to the practitioners who had actually argued cases they had studied. But for those who had not yet studied law, spending a week analysing legal problems they did not understand was a sure way to put them off. Worse still, work experience and random placements interfered with the mini pupillage assessment system. Sometimes it was difficult to turn down requests: when the Master of the Rolls’ clerk asked if his son could spend a week in chambers on work experience there was a concern that a refusal might impact on future listings in court.

In 1997 one of the pupils was a lady called Alison Ryan. She was a strong and forthright personality who had excelled at interview in what was perhaps not the strongest year. By January of her pupillage year concerns had been raised about curious and inconsistent statements she had made about her health. At the same time her flatmates (she lived in an Inner Temple flat) had expressed similar concerns to the Inn about her veracity. An inquiry led by Jonathan Hirst (for Brick Court) and John Chadwick (for Inner Temple) discovered that whilst on her CV she claimed to have a first class degree from Cambridge, in fact she had obtained a lower second. Moreover, a glowing reference she had used from someone who was said to have been her tutor, had been forged. She was struck off by the Bar Council and next surfaced a year or two later when the press announced her appointment as Press Secretary for Manchester United FC, an appointment which was rescinded when the football club learned more about her background than she had disclosed.