At Hailsham Chambers we excel in our core practice areas. We are a leading set in professional liability, medical law, and costs. We are also well regarded for our complementary expertise in regulatory and disciplinary, personal injury and commercial law.
A pupillage at Hailsham Chambers offers you the opportunity to work on interesting, high quality cases, with leading practitioners in their field. We offer a comprehensive training programme, focussed on professional liability and medical work, together with advocacy training.
We are a friendly and inclusive set with a genuinely supportive culture. We mentor and support pupils throughout their pupillage and beyond. We want the best candidates to join us, irrespective of their background and personal characteristics.
We recruit two pupils each year through the Pupillage Gateway. Our pupils are evaluated individually and do not compete with each other. All pupils who meet the required standard are offered tenancy in Chambers.
We offer pupils a £80,000 award including £20,000 guaranteed billed earnings during the second six months of pupillage.
We think it is very important to continue training in Chambers’ core practice areas throughout the second six, so pupils’ own Court commitments are carefully managed to ensure that they are able to do this. If you do not bill more than £20,000 during your second six months, for any reason, then Chambers will make up the difference. You will be able to keep anything you earn on top of the £20,000 guaranteed billed earnings.
You can draw down up to £10,000 of your award during the BPTC year.
The pupillage award is intended to cover all our pupils’ costs during pupillage, including any compulsory courses, a laptop if you do not already have one, travel and subsistence.
Chambers recruit through the Pupillage Gateway and further details as to how to apply are available there.
The criteria by which we select our pupils, and ultimately our tenants, are:
We recognise that candidates may be at differing stages of their legal education and that pupillage is itself a period of training. We are interested in candidates’ abilities and their potential. Our pupillage programme aims to develop knowledge and skills, so pupils can go on to succeed as tenants at Hailsham Chambers.
We want to recruit the best candidates from the widest possible pool of talent, irrespective of age, background, disability, gender, marital status, religion, sexuality, or any other protected characteristic.
We recognise that various minority groups have been historically under-represented at the Bar, and in our Chambers, and we are committed to changing that.
Hailsham Chambers adheres to and supports the Bar Council’s policies on equal opportunity and non-discrimination. We have implemented a robust equality and diversity policy to ensure that we treat everyone equally and fairly. For further details of this, please see here.
Chambers runs a thorough pupillage training programme, with detailed ongoing assessment against the competences in the BSB Professional Statement.
Pupils will be formally appraised by their pupil supervisor every three months, against those competences. The Head of Pupillage will also review each pupil’s experience and performance with them at regular intervals during pupillage.
Pupils will undertake several in-house advocacy exercises, at least two of which will be assessed. Those advocacy assessments, together with formal reports from all the pupil supervisors and from other members of chambers for whom the pupil has undertaken written work, will form the basis of the tenancy decision in July. Recruitment as a tenant is by reference to criteria available here.
We want to recruit junior tenants from our pupils. We have an excellent track record of doing so.
Junior tenants at Hailsham Chambers undertake a mixture of specialist work in Chambers’ core areas of practice from the outset, together with more general Court work. We encourage junior tenants to undertake as much Court work as possible in their early years of practice to develop their advocacy skills.
In their first year of practice, junior tenants can expect to earn in the region of £60,000 to £80,000 (before expenses and tax), although this does vary between individuals, and some have earned considerably more. Typically, our junior tenants quickly establish busy practices, and can specialise in particular areas of law at a relatively early stage if they wish to.
Please find our answers to frequently asked questions here.
The life of a junior at Hailsham is a perfect balance between appearing in Court, and developing drafting skills through paperwork. The work is very varied and there is no such thing as a typical week. The variety means that one learns quickly. Fortunately, the atmosphere in Chambers is incredibly friendly and supportive; there is always somebody one can talk to when faced with a challenging case that raises new areas of the law. I have found Hailsham to be the ideal place to build my practice and gain lots of practical advocacy experience.
The pupillage at Hailsham was excellent. Each of my supervisors was incredibly supportive and put a huge amount of time and effort into providing thorough and regular feedback. I benefitted from seeing a wide variety of cases, all of which were fascinating, and attending conferences, mediations and hearings with my supervisors.
The advocacy training, run by the juniors in Chambers, was a great opportunity to practise before getting on my feet in my second six. The juniors are also always willing to discuss any concerns or questions you might have. Some have even made their own notes and guides about small claims hearings which they share with pupils before the second six.
As for the general atmosphere in Chambers, the juniors took me for lunch every few weeks during pupillage and I was invited to various networking events and socials. Hailsham is a truly inclusive and friendly set!
Chambers is ranked as a leading set in both of our main practice areas, (professional and clinical negligence), which shows in the quality of the work you will be exposed to in (and after) pupillage. The genuinely supportive and friendly ethos stands Hailsham apart from other sets. I was treated like a member of chambers from day one and was included in as many socials, professional talks and client events as possible. Finally, pupils sit with their supervisors and are not put in a separate ‘pupils’ room, as is the case in some sets.
For more information about pupillages at Hailsham Chambers, please see Chambers’ Pupillage Policy or contact pupillage@hailshamchambers.com
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