Preparing your CV:
Build a Strong CV with a broad range of experiences. All experience is good experience, whether working at a coffee shop or volunteering at your local law centre. The gateway allows you to input your experience/CV into the system all year round, so definitely do this as soon as possible to save time during the window.
Mini-Pupillages: List any mini-pupillages you have completed. Depending on how full your CV is you might want to highlight any specific tasks or observations during your mini. These are anyways good to draft up for interview/application questions you may get about why you are interested in the Bar or why you have chosen a specific area of law.
Volunteering: Write about any legal or non-legal volunteer work. Emphasise any skills and responsibilities you were given, especially communication skills.
Part-Time Jobs: Part-time jobs are always great to include, focus on the transferable skills gained such as customer service skills and problem-solving. Additionally, working a part-time job while studying shows good organisational skills.
Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) as much as possible to describe your experiences. This approach allows you to be results orientated and show the impact you made in each role.
For example:
- Situation: faced with a backlog of case files needing review.
- Task: Tasked with organising and summarising the files
- Action: Implemented a systematic filing and summary process.
- Result: Reduced review time by 30%, improving overall efficiency.
Anticipate the Questions:
In interviews and also the written application, there are some questions that you can prepare for well in advance. For example, “why do you want to be a barrister?” or “why X area of law?”. Take this time to have a long hard think about questions like these and make sure your answer is unique to you and not the usual clichés.
Preparing for competency-based questions are also a great idea. To prepare for these think about scenarios where you have demonstrated skills like advocacy, problem-solving, initiative etc. Practice your responses and even write them down using STAR. This provides you with a bank of different scenarios to talk about and can save you time later on down the application and interview process.
