Cloisters Chambers - True Picture

Cloisters Chambers pupillage review 2026

The Chambers

“One thing about the Bar is that there are a lot of very able people,” senior clerk Glenn Hudson tells us. Of course, that means that to stand out from the crowd, sets need to do something a little different. For Cloisters, it’s clear what the USP is right from the outset: “It’s our user-friendliness,” Glenn is quick to point out; “we get a lot of genuine loyalty from clients because of our friendly nature!”

Emotional intelligence is valued highly at the set, something that is reflected in the work which, though it started life as a criminal set, switched to a focus on civil matters around 30 years ago: “Our ethos is that we are a set that helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

“Our ethos is that we are a set that helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

The employment practice at Cloisters is undoubtedly what the set is most known for. The Chambers UK Bar ranks it as a top set in the area, alongside rankings in areas like personal injury and clinical negligence.The employment practice makes up around 65-70% of the work, with personal injury and clinical negligence another 15-20%.

Hudson admits that on the employment side “we do less claimant work than we used to,” with an increased focus paid on the respondent side, but “certainly on the personal injury clinical negligence side we only do claimant. We fight that corner for people not as fortunate as others, so we still hold a lot of that ethos at Cloisters.” The remaining work is made up of a mix of public law and commercial matters.

The set’s recent employment work stretches “from employment injunctions in the High Court and Supreme Court work to multi-party litigation and the largest group claim in legal history,” Hudson tells us. To get an idea of scale, Caspar Glyn KC and Olivia-Faith Dobbie prosecuted the Bolt case for more than 15,000 claimants. The case revolved around private hire drivers who could be booked via the Bolt app. Their claim was that they are ‘employed’ by the Bolt company as ‘workers’ whenever they undertake a driving assignment and were therefore entitled to be paid the national minimum wage. The judgement, which ruled in the drivers favour, effects 100,000 Bolt drivers in the UK.

Heading up much of the work outside of employment is Cloisters’ personal injury practice and though we can’t mention specific cases, it covers a broad spectrum of anything from traumatic brain injury cases and road traffic accident claims to slipping incidents. Also highly recognised is the set’s work in civil liberties and human rights – most recently reflected in Robin Allen KC’s representation of the Local Government Association and the Welsh Local Government Association as core participants in the COVID-19 Inquiry.

The Pupillage Experience

Split into a non-practising first six and a practising second six, pupils cycle through four three-month seats, equally split between supervisors from both employment and personal injury/clinical negligence practices. Newbies do also get the opportunity to work for members from other smaller practices, head of pupillage Rachel Barrett tells us, such as public, sports and inquests.

“…one of my supervisors was doing a two-week trial and they asked me to go alongside them, prepare a small section of the cross-examination and a very small area of the closing submission. It was cool to work with and see them in court!”

When it comes to Cloisters’ overall approach to supervision, it’s “responsive to the needs of the individual pupil; we give people as much support and input as they need.” We heard that there is no one-size-fits-all policy, but general guidance for supervisors is that nearer the start of pupillage “it’s very hands-on, then it becomes a lighter touch” as newbies develop experience and grounding in practice.

Supervisors tend to avoid giving pupils dead work, instead integrating them into their own live matters. One former pupil, for example, told us that “one of my supervisors was doing a two-week trial and they asked me to go alongside them, prepare a small section of the cross-examination and a very small area of the closing submission. It was cool to work with them and see them in court!”

While a pupil’s second six is mostly composed of assessments and practising, “the focus is still on learning and development.” When it comes to taking on work, “they want to make sure you’re picking up the right stuff.” A current pupil praised the system where “you can speak to clerks and alert them to the areas of law you’re interested in,” and then, once you’ve developed relationships with clients, “you usually keep getting instructions from those, so it’s a good way to get your teeth into it.”

On the employment side, early work typically takes the form of written advice, then preliminary hearings for claimants and respondents in the Employment Tribunal. In personal injury and clinical negligence, it's often fast-tracked trials in the County Court.

There are no assessments in the first six because the first half of pupillage “is purely focused on learning,” with the set instead opting to introduce them in pupils’ third seats. 10% of a pupil’s grade is a reflection of the feedback they’ve received from whoever they have worked with, but the rest is balanced across four assessments: 20% goes towards a drafting exercise – usually something from a PI or clinical negligence discrimination case; 20% on a research task, typically outside of chambers’ practice areas; an advocacy for an application relating to one of chambers’ main practice areas (also 20%); and the remaining 30% an interview. The interview consists of a legal problem question, and then a non-legal question.

“The assessments are tough!” and “it’s obviously a high-stakes time” so, to compensate, Cloisters phases them over a few months to ensure pupils aren’t overburdened, with two weeks on, two weeks off. Ultimately, they are to “make sure everyone is up and running by the end of the year in the main practice areas,” Barrett explains, at a level of competence relative to a new member.

“In your first six particularly, there is a rigorously enforced policy of not working too hard,” a recent junior told us – “if you turn up at 7.30am and are leaving at 7pm you will be told not to!” All of our interviewees commented on the positive relationship members and pupils alike have with the clerking room: “I have never felt pressure to take a brief; there’s no culture where if they tell you to do something you have to do it.” Hudson explains that “we encourage pupils to say hi to the clerks and to build those relationships.”

When asked about the set’s culture, one insider described it as “progressive, because a lot of the work is done at the cutting edge of employment law – a lot of those decisions are going a long way to help in our understanding of labour rights!” We heard that post-Covid the numbers physically coming into chambers has dropped – like in most sets –but Barrett assures us “we’ve made more of a conscious effort to bring people together. It’s not like we have chambers tea where someone rolls a trolley around, but we do pop to the pub for lunch, and most weeks there will be an email to join, so people do organise things throughout the year.”

The Application Process

Prospective pupils apply to Cloisters via the Pupillage Gateway, “one of the most user-friendly applications!” according to one current pupil. That comes with the standard questions: Why do you want to be a barrister? What advocacy experience do you have? Why Cloisters? Following this, and once a candidate has listed any potential disadvantages they might have (“they account for that”), the next step is a non-legal morality puzzle to complete remotely.

“It’s something whacky, a completely abstract scenario under time pressure,” one insider chuckled, but the idea is to provide advice on how to resolve the issue. Barrett explains that it’s “as easy to answer for people who have completed the Bar as for people who have just started” to ensure candidates are on an even footing, with the aim being to test candidates’ power of analyses, and ability to think on their feet.

Between 14 and 20 people make it through to the second, final round interview. Two weeks before the interview, candidates are sent a problem between general tort, personal injury and employment law – “a legal scenario, and the problem is about what claims might arise from it.” The two weeks preparation time “was very generous,” giving candidates time to develop a presentation “where you’re not pretending to advise the client, you’re just in front of a panel of six to seven barristers.”

Barrett tells us that most of the interview is given for candidates to explain their answer and have a discussion about it. For both relative newcomers and veterans to the legal world “they are difficult questions, but they’re not insurmountable; they base their interventions on your level of experience, so not having done the Bar course shouldn’t deter you!” The panel then end the interview with a topical question “off the cuff that they haven’t prepared for,” Barrett tells us – again to see a candidate’s resilience and how well they can defend their point of view: “We do give some marks for presentation and the structure of the answer, but we’re not looking for people to be the finished product. We want them to have potential.”

“We’re not looking for people from any particular background or academic profile,” Barrett tells us. The set incorporates Rare Recruitment into their process, as well as reserving 50% of their mini pupillage spots for underrepresented groups.One thing Cloisters is keen to do is “to be a home for all different kinds of people. We talk like human beings, not in legal jargon, because we pride ourselves on being open, inclusive and welcoming – that is the chambers culture.”