A day in the life of a barrister: Get advice on joining the Bar

In this episode Emily chats to Jake Newell a self-employed barrister and member of East Anglian Chambers. Jake discusses the challenges of law school, the role of clerks, and the importance of networking in building a successful legal career. Whether you're considering a career in law or curious about the life of a barrister, this episode is packed with insights and practical tips

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
• Jake Newell - Barrister

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Prospects. I'm your host Emily Slade and in this episode I chat to Jake who works as a barrister.

Jake Newell: My name is Jake Newell and I'm a barrister at East Anglian Chambers. So in terms of the bar, barristers have quite a broad role. We go to court, we advise our clients in conference and sometimes we do what's known as paperwork, written work which can be drafting a case right at the beginning. Or we give our opinion on a particular case. So it's it's quite a a mixed varied job which is quite nice. You're also self-employed. So I get to take time off whenever I want, assuming that there isn't a case in the diary you, it's really quite flexible role really. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Wow. Oh, my God. I didn't know that. So let's go right back to the beginning. What's the Bar? 

Jake Newell: The Bar is basically this institution that each barrister belongs to. I I guess when barristers say the bar, it means that the bar exams or the Bar Standards Board or Bar Council, who are, you know, the people that kind of regulate us or, you know, update us with our training. But at. Bar. It's particularly like practitioners barristers who, you know, go to court, do do the advisory work. So it's it's pretty much an umbrella term for the profession generally because if you say the bar in the UK, it means specifically barristers as opposed to solicitors. But then, weirdly enough, if you go to like, say the US and you say the bar, it's just every lawyer because you know it's slightly different out there. 

Emily Slade: OK. And you're self-employed? 

Jake Newell: Yeah. 

Emily Slade: Is that standard across the board? Every barrister in the UK will be self employed?  

Jake Newell: So let's just take umm, you know, a local insurance company for example, if they have their own in-house team you are employed by them and they are your client. If you're a member of Chambers and this is where it gets a little bit weird and I have to explain it to everyone say like, what is this this setup, this dynamic most barristers. But we become members of Chambers, which are like a group or association of barristers that specialise in one area. So whilst I'm self-employed, I'm also a member of East Anglian Chambers and we pay each month towards our clerks, our rent, that kind of stuff. So it gives us a space where we can go and do our work or we get cases allocated to us and. 

Emily Slade: Things like that okay. So in terms of getting cases. As a self-employed person, do you have to find them yourself? 

Jake Newell: At the beginning of your career, when you're you're quite junior, I still am quite junior. The clerks will help you kind of push you in a lot in the right way, give you a bit of direction to say. You know, this is where you should be thinking because you won't have those connections to start with. After a while there is somewhat of an expectation that you're able to bring your own work in and I'm. I'd like to think I'm quite heavy-handed with that actually, because I go out all the time with the local solicitors. You know network, just have chats, go for coffee, that kind of stuff. There's a lot of this job is you've got to be seen, you've got to be present and it's also reputation based. So you know, the more marketing you do in terms of putting yourself out there. The more likely you are to attract work you do like a LinkedIn post on an update in the law or whatever, and that can sometimes generate work for you because I think, oh, you know, Jake's done a post on that, so he knows what he's talking about. And then next thing you know, you've got a phone call coming through saying, oh, can you do this case on that? Which is. It's quite nice actually, so yeah. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, incredible. That's so cool. So what was your educational journey? 

Jake Newell: So mine was quite a drawn out one in terms of I did my undergrad at Essex and in 2011 graduate in 2014. And one thing that I would say right now for any listener is don't expect an immediate result with the bar it. It's always going to be a slow burn and a lot of people get quite disheartened by that. But you'll see from my story that perseverance will get you there. See, I I did my undergrad at Essex and it was a really amazing three years, but. When I look back, I guess quite a bizarre 3 years because I went in very, you know, nervous, very shy, very, very withdrawn. And then after three years, I'm President of Law Soc. And I've this completely different kid. And I'm like, how did that happen? That's where I did my undergrads. I took a few years out afterwards, just getting some life experience and growing up because of this particular job. You know you're working with vulnerable clients, you're working with people that are stressed out. There's a lot of pressure on you and you need to be able to handle that. And I knew at that 21. That wasn't, you know, the situation that I wanted to be in, so I did that. Then I did the bar exams for a year in London, did my master's degree part time after that, and then between then and starting in 2022, I basically did a series of legal jobs just to get that experience and really tailored the CV. So it's quite drawn out one. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. And is that the usual process sort of undergrad? Like bar exams, masters. 

Jake Newell: There are a couple of iterations, so most people would do a law degree. Then they'll do the bar exams and then straight onto pupilage. If you're a nerd like me, you want to do your master's, and that's what the masters was. It was just fun for me, really, because it's in an area of law that I don't actually practise in at the moment. It's more of a, you know, my genuine interest and love. But you get a lot of people now that don't. Agree, which is really good actually, because you you learn different kind of skills and how to approach things slightly differently. They'll do what's known as the GDL, which is the graduate diploma in law. So it's basically a conversion from, let's say, philosophy into law. Then they'll do the bar exams. Then they'll go on to pupilage so you can kind of do that sideways move as well, yeah. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. And do you get to choose which area of law you work in? 

Jake Newell: Yeah. Yeah, that's. I mean, that's the beauty of being self-employed is that if I want to turn around and say I don't want to crime anymore, for example, I don't have to do it. I mean, what when you're at the junior and there's more of an expectation, you do a bit of everything kind of see where your strengths are, what you're interested in. And I think for the listeners. It's really important to have that open mind, 18 year old Jake wanted to be. A criminal barrister. Then he wanted to be completely commercial and then he found himself. Actually, you know what? I I like what I'm doing in terms of common law and all these different bits and pieces. So yeah, the ability is there for you really. To. Create your own practise as you move along and I guess when you apply for pupilage at different chambers because different chambers specialise in different areas. That kind of gives you an indication of where you're likely to end up. 

Emily Slade 

Yeah. You mentioned your clerks. Would you start off as a clerk or is that an entirely different segment of job? 

Jake Newell: Yeah, different segment altogether. So my my clerks are amazing. I have to say that they they are fantastic. And you know, without them we would be lost. You know, it's it's dealing with solicitors. It's getting the papers in its diary management. You know they deal with so many problems behind the scenes to make our lives easier. When we go to court and it's a completely different skill set. But you don't have to be a clerk to be a barrister. They're usually quite quite separate. 

Emily Slade: So can you describe a typical day in your role? 

Jake Newell: The the reason I say no is it's not to be difficult. There is no typical day. And that's both the beauty, but also the the scary arguments side of being self-employed. I guess in that one day you'll be in court, you know you've got a nice long case and you know what you're doing and then say tomorrow I'm meant to have another case, but that comes out the diary last minute because the court have taken it out the listings have. It's settled. You're kind of then at the mercy of whatever's going on around you sort of thing and like the the past three weeks for me, for example, have been really good examples of that where, you know, this week I'm doing purely paperwork. I'm going away over the weekend, so. I'm trying to get ahead of myself. Last week I was in court every single day and in the week before that was a very quiet 1. So it's kind of like there are no two days that the same which I know is a bit. A cliche. But this really does push you to that limit. You have to be quite flexible with it. You have to you have to kind of embrace that. That unknown nature of the beast? I guess so. 

Emily Slade: Is it very freelancing that you could be summoned in on a weekend at random at last minute? Like is there flexibility like you almost can't go to sleep at night because you might be waiting for a phone call? 

Jake Newell: Or is there some structure there? There is some structure, so when when I was a pupil I'm doing my training, we used to do. Like weekend cover shifts for domestic violence Protection Orders and you would basically be on call all all of Friday and then you'd get a phone call to say we need you in on the Saturday morning to go to the magistrates to do one of these cases. Is. Or you don't have to go in your. You're fine. So there is. There are some circumstances where you do need to be on call, but it's not a situation where you know my client's gonna call me at 3:00 in the morning and be like, right. You need been caught first thing to do XY and Z. Although that's just my practise. There are some areas of law where you do need to. You know, emergency applications. And I know in the High Court they always have a judge who's on call to deal with these emergency applications. So their phone's on loud. They might get a caller, you know, 2:00 in the morning. Mm hmm. We need this emergency injunction for XY and Z. And then, you know, they've got to wake up and actually. With it all, so yeah. 

Emily Slade: What's the best piece of advice you can give to somebody that's starting out? 

Jake Newell: Oh, oh, that's that's a good one. I mean, I could probably do a lecture on that alone really. I think that the first thing is really perseverance. Like if you want it bad enough, you have to fight for it. I I remember the first barrister I ever came across and I I to this day I still keep in touch with him and I I was 17, bumped into him at a talk. At my sixth form, back in Essex and he said this, this was opener, by the way, this this wasn't a situation of like I'll, I'll slide this into the conversation. It's one of you will be lucky to get to the bar and there are like 100 students. And we were like. Right. OK, that's that. You know, that's great. Way to give us a pep talk there. Cheers. But that, you know, he was right. It's one of those things that you have to fight tooth for nail for because you have to get to union. Get a good grade. You have to get all the little additional bits and pieces on top of that. So whether it's your mooting which is your legal debating skills. Shadowing barrister shadowing solicitors judges. You know, that's all very much the basic element of an application for pupils because everyone's done it. And you've got to remember that you're always against someone that's got, you know, a stellar CV or these stellar, you know, grades and experiences. So it's all about pitching yourself. And I found with publich applications in particular. They're not like normal job applications because you're kind of given a question of, for example, why would you be a good barrister? 200 words max go. It's kind of like, OK, right. I need to do that in 200 words, talk about myself and showcase. AM. Going to do that and you've got, I learned you have to be quite punchy with them. So I started doing bullet points. But The thing is you don't learn that until maybe two or three years into actually applying. By which time a lot of people, quite understandably, would have been disheartened and say, well, maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm not good enough and you know it's it's really not the case because I've had feedback in the past where, you know, the difference between being on the reserve list and getting an offer. Is one of you answered the question a little bit more elaborately than the other one, and you're talking about the finest of margins? 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Jake Newell: So just because you don't get people in the first time, second time or even the third time doesn't mean you're a bad candidate. It just means luck. The. Really. So. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. What would you say? Does make a good candidate? Are there certain skill sets or personality types that would work better as a barrister than others? 

Jake Newell: Yeah, I think you have to be comfortable with pressure. I think that that's that's the big one, because you're gonna have. Clients that are worried, stressed, angry. You can have a judge who's sometimes annoyed and you've got to be able to read the room and try and, you know, persuade the judge to give you what you want without annoying them too much. And I guess kind of linked into that is your communication skills. You need to be able to put a point across quite well and there are a number of ways you can do that. So for example, the approach I always take with law is yes, it's this, this fabulous concept and it's quite complex and it's really interesting for me academically. But a clients not going to care about that clients going to want to know. Yes. No. Can I do this? Can I do that? How much do I have to pay? How much can I receive? So in some ways you've got to translate law into you know everyday. Which is another skill that you really have to have interpersonal skills being pragmatic, being practical. It's as I say, sometimes you. The room or you have to find a creative solution when you know your clients back is against the wall sort of thing and you think right? How can I get out of this? In a way, that kind of saves them as best as I can sort of thing. On top of that, you need to be quite academic, but you know, as I say it, chambers are probably going to go with someone who has let's say A21 but can talk to people. And is confident as opposed to someone with a start first who runs out the door whenever a client gets a little bit kind of touchy about something. So yeah. 

Emily Slade: Yeah, of course. Any myths that you'd liked to debunk?  

Jake Newell: Anything you watch on TV. Anything on TV. Isn’t real.  

Emily Slade: Legally Blonde wasn't a documentary? 

Jake Newell: No, no, “you go here?!” 

Elle Woods: What? Like it's hard? 

Jake Newell: No, sadly not. Sadly not. It's not like that. It's not a situation where even with Suits, you know you can do these underhand things. We've got an ethical obligation to not mislead the court. We've got a, you know, a handbook that we have to follow and abide by. So any of these kind of things where it's like, oh, yeah, I'll just, you know, hold this back and produce it in court last minute, right? It doesn't work. Like that, because there's this thing called disclosure where you have to basically hand over all of your documents that are relevant to the case. And that includes both documents that are helpful to your case, but then also prejudicial to your side in terms of, you know, they go against your point, it's it's it's very different in that regard, which is you know it's a lot less glamorous because I've had mini pupils basically that work experience students follow me around, which in itself is really weird as a junior because you're like, I'm only been doing this for two years and following me and asking me questions like I'm the special. OK, there are still days that I learn things you know for the first time. But yeah, it's one of those situations where the hard work behind the scenes is pretty much the job. Yeah, we go into court, we wear the wig, we wear the gown, we make the arguments. But a lot of the prep behind the scenes is where you make those. Fundamental points and you know you're going to have to cross examine cross examination is terrifying as well. You know, I can imagine. I've seen it in my clients face as well. They've just, you know, really gone into their show. And like, I don't like this. But I find that when you're at the junior and you do what's on a small claims track cases, it's like the very small cases. Hmm. And they're quite. And a lot of people, when they come to court, they're they're expecting, you know, everyone to be wigged and gowned everyone to be robed, judged to be on a bench. You know, a lot higher than you looking down. Mm hmm, being the small claims track, you don't wear your wig and gown. It's quite informal. And so it's quite a shock to them when, you know, they see that situation unfolding and they're. This is nothing like TV. I'm like, This is why I keep telling you don't watch Legally Blonde and think that's it. 

Emily Slade: That's a shame. 

Jake Newell: But then you know it's it's still a good fun job because there is an element of theatricality to it.  

Emily Slade: Like Chicago.  

Jake Newell: Yeah! You know, you go to court and the way you put your questions to a witness or the way you make a submission, you know, put an emphasis on certain words, can have a huge impact. And it's it's quite a lot of fun. 

Emily Slade: I have to say it does sound really exciting, but on the flip side of that. There must be days where you lose. And is that tough or do you just have to take it on the chin and move on? 

Jake Newell: I think there's a bit of both really. I think in some cases you I mean in in some cases they'll really hit you let's say for like a family law case, for example. You know the cases about parents having contact with children. That would hit me a lot more than, say, a sum of money, because a sum of money I take the view that money is quite common, but a relationship with a child. If you're a parent is fundamentally different, so there are some cases where you know you sit there and you think that was really quite sad. I did the best that I could, but courts gone against us, you know, for whatever reason, conversely, there are some cases where you you look at the papers and you know it's a dead duck and you have to then be the one that says to the client. Look, I read this. This is my professional opinion. I think you're gonna have a really tough time. Sometimes they'll want to go into court for you. The principle of it really more than anything else. And those cases you get absolutely bodied and you think I did my best and sometimes there is an element of you know I lost that one. I know it was a bad case but it still has kind of an impact on me. But then it's the way you bounce back from that which counts. You've got to be able to dust yourself down and move on again. We've we've all had cases that we've lost, and you're only as good as the facts of your case. There is no no lawyer like Harvey Spector where you know you win 100% of the time. Yeah. You know, we're not allowed to just pick and choose our clients because we like the look of their case. You know as much as that would make our reputations a lot bigger and bolster us. We could claim to not lost a single case. Access to justice is a much more important, fundamental point in our in our society.  

Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, amazing. This sounds really cool. I'm not gonna go get a law degree any time soon but... 

Jake Newell: I mean, if you ever wanted to see later on in life, you could do because that's again one of the beautiful things about the bar is people do it as a second career. So I've I've had a couple of students follow me around. I say students, they're older than I am. But you know, they've done a degree and then gone on to say that medicine, insurance, sales, whatever. And then they thought, actually, I'm going to try my hand. The. Cool. And that's really quite interesting because then you get to see things from a completely different perspective. Because I always have this habit of going for coffee afterwards with my minis, just to kind of talk about the bar, what to expect, and answer any questions they have. And when you talk to to someone who's had that second kind of perspective of things, it completely changes the way you look at law, which is quite nice.  

Emily Slade: No, that makes complete sense. That's so interesting. So do you find there's a lot of people that are there, sort of second go career wise? 

Jake Newell: I think it's growing actually. I mean it used to be this unheard or thing where you know you would go and do a law degree and it would be. Blah blah blah. Blah, that's it. But now those days have changed and it's gone. And I think for the better actually, because it gives you those fresh perspectives, perspectives. It gives you the ability to look at things slightly differently, learn. Maybe about things in practise as well, so you know if you've got someone who's got a medical background and they're they've been a doctor for four or five years, then they come to the bar, they're going to be a lot better place in the personal injury claim than I am because they've got the medical background so. You know, it's advantageous in a lot of circumstances, which is. Good. Yeah. 

Emily Slade: Oh brilliant. I've run out of questions. Was there anything else that you wanted to mention? 

Jake Newell: I mean in terms of the bar generally, one thing that a lot of people don't kind of think about are their insurance of court and their scholarship. Now I was quite lucky when I applied. I got a scholarship and I'll be completely transparent. That's how I funded the bar exams, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it. You have to be part of an Inns of course. We have Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn, Inner Temple. I'm part of Middle. And you know, I I think they're fantastic. When it comes to thinking about doing the bar exams, you need to be a member of one of. Insurance, right? Typically they do the same kind of thing. They provide you training and education opportunities and you have to do 12 qualifying sessions, which is like going to dinners or going to certain events with them before. You can be called to the bar, but one thing that I really try to push students to consider is the scholarship element. Two of them, Middle and Inner, at the time of recording. Anyway, they interview absolutely everyone. So you put a paper application in. Regardless of how good or bad it is, you're still getting interview, whereas Lincoln's and Grays, they'll do a paper sift, so paper applications go in, they'll take, say, the top 1015%, then they interview them and that's quite important for me to kind of outline to everybody because. If you're not very good on paper in terms of I don't like writing about myself, but I can have a conversation with people. Go for Middle or Inner just because then you know that you've got the safety net of the paper behind you, but you're more comfortable talking to people if you want to hedge your bets and you, you feel more confident on paper, apply to Lincoln and Gray. But you know you've got that element of, you have to be very good to kind of get to that interview stage. So that would be something that I I would think about just in terms of practical application, but anything you do in life I found is really, really quite useful for a pupillage application more generally. When I I was at Uni, I worked in the SU bar, so I did like a bit of catering. Bit of the bar stuff as well and things like that are still directly relevant because you might think well how serving someone like I don't know, a plate of food or a pint. Any. Yeah. How? How is that relevant to being a barrister? And it is because, you know, if you're working a late shift, you know, people are getting rowdy. You know, they're drunk. Certain things may happen when people are drunk, it increases the chances that someone's vulnerable. You have to be able to deal with that and you know, circumstances like that working in the team, communicating with people, working under pressure. Are you know they're all the skills you need to be a barrister. You just have done it in a slightly different way, so I would encourage people to use that because it shows an element of personality as well. You have to be able to conform to the standards of the bar, IE you need to dress a certain way and you need to behave professionally and all of that stuff. But I found that if you retain parts of your personality, you can kind of put them in in a Safeway. So for me, I'm a massive comic book nerd, right? So my cufflinks are Superman ones. And so I always wear these and the client will look at. And. Be like, Oh my God, that's that's pretty cool. 

Emily Slade: You're a human. 

Jake Newell: Exactly. You're a human being and you know that wins clients over because they see you are a person. You're not just this. I don't know holier than thou kind of being that does their case then walks away again. So show some personality as well. And that can be through your sport. You know, include that in your YOUR applications as well. It doesn't have to be specifically legal in terms of legal work. Don't do anything illegal kids. That's the big takeaway here. So yeah, do that because when the interviewers are reading through these applications and you need to remember there are about 304 hundred applications for two spaces, you know you've got to stand out. And if it's just Oei have written this dissertation, I've done this in law and done that in law. That's all well and good, but you know, put something else in there. It's a little bit rogue, something a little bit different and then it allows them to kind of say, well, I want to find out more about that. I want to know more about this person because they've said this and that sounds quite interesting. So yeah, tie it up as much as you can to make it all relevant. 

Emily Slade: Fantastic. That's brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today. 

Jake Newell: No, thank you for the invitation and have me on. 

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Jake for their time. For more information on becoming a barrister or getting into law, head to Prospects.ac.uk or check out the show notes below. For a full length video version of this episode , check out our YouTube channel @future you pod If you enjoyed the episode feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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