Home Away from Home with the Pre-Pupillage Team
By Inner Temple
This academic year has been busy as ever for the Pre-Pupillage team. As always, we have run a diverse and varied programme of Qualifying Sessions, with sessions taking place online and in person, with topics varying from ethics in practice to practical advocacy training, to panels on EDI and advice on applying and interviewing for pupillage. We implemented a new structure for our QS programme, formalising the layout of the themes and topics our students encounter across the academic year and ensuring they complement the education offered on the Bar Course wherever possible. Our aim was to refine our offering, providing students with a developing series of sessions that built on existing knowledge and gained in complexity over the course of the year. We are extremely proud of the work achieved and will continue to upgrade our offering as the need arises.
Our annual Introductory Evenings were once again accompanied by our clothing drive, where experienced members of the Bar and judiciary donated professional clothing to be taken by the students for free. This year’s was our most successful yet, with the largest number of donations and, correspondingly, the largest number of students finding new items for their professional wardrobes so far! We were happy to have our student societies represented at the events, along with other external organisations such as LPC Law, London Lawyers’ Music and FRU.
In addition to this, our programme of events held outside of London has gone from strength to strength, with a number of multi-QS days and residentials held at hubs around the country. We successfully trialled a residential weekend at a new venue, Moor Hall CIM in Cookham in December, as well as revisiting Crewe Hall in January and hosting a third student weekend at the Inn in May. On circuit, we adapted our programme to increase uptake for the Skills Days run across the UK. The Inn ran four full-day Saturday sessions outside of London in Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham between October and collaborated with the other Inns of Court to open Manchester and Nottingham sessions up to students from all four Inns.
As always, the travel element is considerable, with the QS team driving, catching trains and, on one memorable occasion, finding themselves trapped in a service station with a non-functional rental car for seven hours ahead of a residential weekend. Our residential and circuit provision is a truly vital element of our educational work, and this can come at the cost of long weekends and many hours on the road. The schedules are often packed, with particular pinch points occurring in October, January and March; however, we hope that with continual tweaking, the programme can continue to be made more streamlined, whilst continuing to offer real value and variety to students across the country.
54 Qualifying Session events
