Old Square Chambers aims to give students on our work experience programme an introduction to a career at the Bar, through attending court to observe cases and group activities amongst work experience students. Our scheme is led by our Chambers Director and their Assistant.
We offer a varied programme and students will have the opportunity to attend court, although this can change at short notice due to the nature of the court system. Whilst with us, students will also take part in group exercises with their peers as our schemes are run in groups of 3 or more students – often having the opportunity to gain an insight into pupillage applications and further sessions designed to help aid their general personal development. Please note that only in exceptional circumstances will students have the opportunity to shadow barristers directly.
We will be holding work experience weeks on the following dates;
Our placements are for one week only.
Due to recent changes in the rules surrounding Public Galleries and the Criminal Courts, we are no longer able to accept applications from individuals under the age of 16. You must be 16 to attend court unescorted and we do not have the resources to escort students to Court for long periods of time. This forms a significant part of our programme and therefore this scheme is limited to students between the ages of 16 and 18 years old. Applications from students under 16 years of age will not be accepted and we will ask successful applicants to provide proof of their age prior to their placement.
Funding is available to contribute towards students travel expenses. Please do not apply for funding unless your application is successful, as this has no bearing on our selection process and it is important that this is kept separate.
If you would like to apply for a place on our Work Experience programme please fill out this application form and return it to hunter@oldsquare.co.uk. We would encourage early applications as we will be capping the total number of applications at 80 for 12 places; this allows for a full and fair shortlisting process. Should this occur before the closing date we will amend this page to that effect and applications will close early. Any applications received after we have reached 80 applications will not be reviewed so we encourage you to apply as early as possible so as not to miss out.
Once we have received 80 applications, we will anonymise the application forms and review them against a scoring matrix. This is to counter the risk of conscious or unconscious bias.
We also ask applicants to complete our equality and diversity questionnaire, which you can access by clicking here. Please note this is voluntary, and it will not have an impact on your application at any stage. The data is captured in an anonymised format and is used to help us ensure individuals from all backgrounds have visibility of our scheme. Further details on how this data is used, stored and how long we keep it for can be found in the introduction to the survey.
If you require any reasonable adjustments to facilitate either your application or, if successful, your placement with us, please do contact us in confidence.
If you have any questions or enquiries please direct them to the Work Experience Co-ordinator, Rebecca Hunter (hunter@oldsquare.co.uk).
PLEASE NOTE: We reserve the right to assess your application against AI checkers. The use of AI is not permitted in your application form and your application will automatically be disqualified if this is found to be the case.
