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An insider’s guide. By Ishan Kolhatkar
The Bar course is a marathon not a sprint. Or perhaps it’s the decathlon with a need to demonstrate your skill in multiple areas without necessarily having to break the world record.
While the course has undergone several revisions since 1997, at least four depending on what you define as a revision, the fact remains that its complexity is in passing assessments that test a range of skills, with some that are not routinely assessed at undergraduate level.
I taught on the course from 2011 to 2019 and was an external examiner until 2020. In that time, I saw how thousands of students approached it, what worked and what didn’t.
If you are taking the course now or have done so recently and recognise the words below as that of your tutors; good. I’ll say at the outset that there is no magic in any of this. It is, I hope, the consistent message given by Bar Course tutors for years. There’s no substitute for hard work.
The Bar course syllabus is huge. It involves consuming vast tracts of the White Book and Blackstone’s Criminal Practice and understanding how to apply it. The skills modules require you to read case papers and demonstrate your application in class through advocacy, conference, opinion writing or drafting. You can’t ‘wing’ any of these and it’s true that you’ll get less out of each class by trying to do so. Importantly, unless you view each class as an opportunity to test your understanding of a topic and skill, you’ll get less out of the course and make passing final assessments more difficult.
How then do I suggest you approach the course? Doing so efficiently requires four Ps:
The only way to get through the vast amount of material on the course is to have a clear plan. Work out when you are going to read the practitioner texts and case materials, when you are going to prepare for skills classes and yes, when you will have time off and/or your other commitments. This isn’t going to happen organically. Can you build some slack into your plan to account for an impromptu night out or work emergency? Consider that, at first, reading practitioner texts and preparing for an advocacy class will take longer than you think because they are likely to be very different from what you have done before.
Student: ‘I haven’t done any prep for this class.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Student: ‘I’d have done better if I had prepared.’
Me: ‘Yes, yes you would.’
Student: ‘I’ll prepare before next week.’
Me: ‘Sure, but that won’t change this week.’
You have one shot at preparing for each class. If you don’t prepare, you can’t effectively participate. I’m afraid there is no shortcut to the knowledge acquisition required for civil and criminal litigation. The course providers produce videos, summaries and lectures but ultimately you are going to be examined on the content of two practitioner texts and so you need to read them. Don’t kid yourself that you’ll read them all at the end. If you aren’t reading the material week by week, you aren’t going to read it all in one go.
For skills subjects (advocacy, conference, opinion writing and drafting) there is nowhere to hide if you don’t participate. Each class is an opportunity to hone your skills and receive useful feedback. With the knowledge subjects, treating the class as an opportunity to hear the tutor give you the answers to questions that you haven’t prepared for, is not going to help your understanding of the material and certainly not help you test your application of it.
At the end of each class, day or week, depending on how you work best, go back through your notes from class and work out where the gaps in your knowledge or skills are. Then schedule some time to plug the gaps. I can also almost guarantee that a lecturer will happily give you their time if you need some help with a topic where it’s clear that you’ve prepared and participated but it just hasn’t stuck. As opposed to being asked to explain litigation. All of it. In 20 minutes.
The three litigation papers are impossible to pass without consuming a huge amount of knowledge and being able to apply it. One of the civil papers is open book but you aren’t going to have enough time to read material from scratch. You have to be familiar with provisions and be able to apply them to the factual scenario before you. This is why only knowing the answers to practice questions or mock papers is insufficient. Unless you are exceptionally fortunate for the exact same scenario cropping up in the real assessment, you’ll only know the answer to a particular factual matrix and not how to apply a provision to whatever you see. Think of it as knowing how to cook eggs vs knowing only how to hard boil an egg. If in the assessment you are asked to demonstrate how to poach an egg with a delicious runny yolk, you’ll be out of luck.
I could write much on advocacy itself but I’ll confine myself to five pieces of advice on how to approach advocacy sessions at Bar school.
Every word matters: The most effective and impressive advocates are those who consider every word they use. Not one wasted. Their language is simple yet powerful. The ability to make complex things easy to understand is a high-level skill and takes time to master. Put down the thesaurus and use everyday words where possible.
Your voice is the voice of a barrister: Don’t affect a voice that sounds like what you think a barrister sounds like. Sure, you need to sound professional and your language needs to be appropriate but that’s a version of you, not aping someone else.
Preparation + delivery = advocacy: You can’t have one without the other. No matter how well you speak, without preparation it will just be random words failing to address your objective, be that making a submission or examining a witness. If you’ve ever heard a barrister say that they just stood up and said whatever came to mind, chances are they didn’t, or it wasn’t very good, or they might be part of the 0.0001% of people who can do that and be impressive. None of those matter. You need to prepare properly in order to get something out of the session. Each advocacy session is a chance to improve and receive valuable feedback. By the same token, how you deliver that preparation is part of the exercise. I’ve lost count of the number of students who asked me to look over their skeleton or list of questions for chief or cross, disappointed I could do no more than comment on the words in the document and not their advocacy. How it’s delivered makes it a piece of advocacy.
Listen: I mean really listen. Be it to a judge or your witness. It’s as important as speaking. It helps you decide what the next word out of your mouth will be.
Don’t make the same mistake twice: Those who took my feedback form and in one smooth motion scrunched it into a ball to go in their bag, probably never read it. Read it. If you don’t understand it, ask your lecturer. If your session was recorded, watch it back with your feedback form to see why each comment was made, good and bad. The added bonus of watching yourself back is that you’ll be able to reflect on things your lecturer might not have seen, again good and bad.
Much of what has been said so far generally and in relation to advocacy preparation and feedback applies equally here. More importantly, submit as many opinions and drafts to be marked as you can. Yes, you’ll gain something from reading the work of others but it’s not a patch on getting first-hand feedback on your own work.
Talk less, smile more. Conference requires you to listen and advise. A synthesis of many of the skills above. Remember that the ‘lay client’ is a human being and needs to hear your expert opinion. Not an essay.
Bar Training 2022: Statistics on enrolment, results, and student progression by course provider, Bar Standards Board
Ishan Kolhatkar was called to the Bar in 2002 and was in chambers until 2011. He then taught on the Bar course before leaving to pursue a career in education technology but retains a door tenancy. He is Executive Strategy Officer at Bridging the Bar. He enjoys cooking and taking photos of his food. Probably in equal measures.
The Bar course is a marathon not a sprint. Or perhaps it’s the decathlon with a need to demonstrate your skill in multiple areas without necessarily having to break the world record.
While the course has undergone several revisions since 1997, at least four depending on what you define as a revision, the fact remains that its complexity is in passing assessments that test a range of skills, with some that are not routinely assessed at undergraduate level.
I taught on the course from 2011 to 2019 and was an external examiner until 2020. In that time, I saw how thousands of students approached it, what worked and what didn’t.
If you are taking the course now or have done so recently and recognise the words below as that of your tutors; good. I’ll say at the outset that there is no magic in any of this. It is, I hope, the consistent message given by Bar Course tutors for years. There’s no substitute for hard work.
The Bar course syllabus is huge. It involves consuming vast tracts of the White Book and Blackstone’s Criminal Practice and understanding how to apply it. The skills modules require you to read case papers and demonstrate your application in class through advocacy, conference, opinion writing or drafting. You can’t ‘wing’ any of these and it’s true that you’ll get less out of each class by trying to do so. Importantly, unless you view each class as an opportunity to test your understanding of a topic and skill, you’ll get less out of the course and make passing final assessments more difficult.
How then do I suggest you approach the course? Doing so efficiently requires four Ps:
The only way to get through the vast amount of material on the course is to have a clear plan. Work out when you are going to read the practitioner texts and case materials, when you are going to prepare for skills classes and yes, when you will have time off and/or your other commitments. This isn’t going to happen organically. Can you build some slack into your plan to account for an impromptu night out or work emergency? Consider that, at first, reading practitioner texts and preparing for an advocacy class will take longer than you think because they are likely to be very different from what you have done before.
Student: ‘I haven’t done any prep for this class.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Student: ‘I’d have done better if I had prepared.’
Me: ‘Yes, yes you would.’
Student: ‘I’ll prepare before next week.’
Me: ‘Sure, but that won’t change this week.’
You have one shot at preparing for each class. If you don’t prepare, you can’t effectively participate. I’m afraid there is no shortcut to the knowledge acquisition required for civil and criminal litigation. The course providers produce videos, summaries and lectures but ultimately you are going to be examined on the content of two practitioner texts and so you need to read them. Don’t kid yourself that you’ll read them all at the end. If you aren’t reading the material week by week, you aren’t going to read it all in one go.
For skills subjects (advocacy, conference, opinion writing and drafting) there is nowhere to hide if you don’t participate. Each class is an opportunity to hone your skills and receive useful feedback. With the knowledge subjects, treating the class as an opportunity to hear the tutor give you the answers to questions that you haven’t prepared for, is not going to help your understanding of the material and certainly not help you test your application of it.
At the end of each class, day or week, depending on how you work best, go back through your notes from class and work out where the gaps in your knowledge or skills are. Then schedule some time to plug the gaps. I can also almost guarantee that a lecturer will happily give you their time if you need some help with a topic where it’s clear that you’ve prepared and participated but it just hasn’t stuck. As opposed to being asked to explain litigation. All of it. In 20 minutes.
The three litigation papers are impossible to pass without consuming a huge amount of knowledge and being able to apply it. One of the civil papers is open book but you aren’t going to have enough time to read material from scratch. You have to be familiar with provisions and be able to apply them to the factual scenario before you. This is why only knowing the answers to practice questions or mock papers is insufficient. Unless you are exceptionally fortunate for the exact same scenario cropping up in the real assessment, you’ll only know the answer to a particular factual matrix and not how to apply a provision to whatever you see. Think of it as knowing how to cook eggs vs knowing only how to hard boil an egg. If in the assessment you are asked to demonstrate how to poach an egg with a delicious runny yolk, you’ll be out of luck.
I could write much on advocacy itself but I’ll confine myself to five pieces of advice on how to approach advocacy sessions at Bar school.
Every word matters: The most effective and impressive advocates are those who consider every word they use. Not one wasted. Their language is simple yet powerful. The ability to make complex things easy to understand is a high-level skill and takes time to master. Put down the thesaurus and use everyday words where possible.
Your voice is the voice of a barrister: Don’t affect a voice that sounds like what you think a barrister sounds like. Sure, you need to sound professional and your language needs to be appropriate but that’s a version of you, not aping someone else.
Preparation + delivery = advocacy: You can’t have one without the other. No matter how well you speak, without preparation it will just be random words failing to address your objective, be that making a submission or examining a witness. If you’ve ever heard a barrister say that they just stood up and said whatever came to mind, chances are they didn’t, or it wasn’t very good, or they might be part of the 0.0001% of people who can do that and be impressive. None of those matter. You need to prepare properly in order to get something out of the session. Each advocacy session is a chance to improve and receive valuable feedback. By the same token, how you deliver that preparation is part of the exercise. I’ve lost count of the number of students who asked me to look over their skeleton or list of questions for chief or cross, disappointed I could do no more than comment on the words in the document and not their advocacy. How it’s delivered makes it a piece of advocacy.
Listen: I mean really listen. Be it to a judge or your witness. It’s as important as speaking. It helps you decide what the next word out of your mouth will be.
Don’t make the same mistake twice: Those who took my feedback form and in one smooth motion scrunched it into a ball to go in their bag, probably never read it. Read it. If you don’t understand it, ask your lecturer. If your session was recorded, watch it back with your feedback form to see why each comment was made, good and bad. The added bonus of watching yourself back is that you’ll be able to reflect on things your lecturer might not have seen, again good and bad.
Much of what has been said so far generally and in relation to advocacy preparation and feedback applies equally here. More importantly, submit as many opinions and drafts to be marked as you can. Yes, you’ll gain something from reading the work of others but it’s not a patch on getting first-hand feedback on your own work.
Talk less, smile more. Conference requires you to listen and advise. A synthesis of many of the skills above. Remember that the ‘lay client’ is a human being and needs to hear your expert opinion. Not an essay.
Bar Training 2022: Statistics on enrolment, results, and student progression by course provider, Bar Standards Board
An insider’s guide. By Ishan Kolhatkar
The Chair of the Bar reports back
Clement Cowley, Partner at The Penny Group, explains how global events can influence the performance of pensions and ISAs, and why taking a long-term approach to investing is often the most effective strategy
Mário Barroso, Head of R&D and Method Development at AlphaBiolabs, discusses what family law professionals need to know about hallucinogens, from the main hallucinogenic drugs encountered in family proceedings, to their effects and the testing options available
Harmony Christian Ministries is the latest charity to benefit from a £500 donation from AlphaBiolabs via the company’s Giving Back initiative
By David Green
Mário Barroso, Head of R&D and Method Development at AlphaBiolabs, examines the forensic science underpinning hair drug testing, its evidential scope and limitations, and why it remains the gold standard for evidencing patterns of drug use in family proceedings
Developing a tech start-up demands a different definition of excellence to the Bar, says Saara Idelbi. The co-creator of Advocatr on entrepreneurship, AI advocacy training, and matching the thrill of a killer cross-examination
At the start of her term, Chair of the Bar 2026 Kirsty Brimelow KC set out a series of priorities for the year ahead. One of those priorities was children in the justice system
As the world becomes more digital, Barbara Vinagre Mota examines international research into the mental health consequences of judges’ exposure to graphic and immersive evidence, highlighting the importance of support systems
Reviewed by Daniel Barnett
James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain until 27 September Rothko in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi until 23 August Reviewed by Stephen Cragg KC
