Queen Elizabeth Building QEB - True Picture

Queen Elizabeth Building QEB pupillage review 2026

The Chambers

You’d be hard pressed to find an area of law with more first-hand human impact than family. Family cases arriving in court are never easy things to navigate and it often means handling complex financial disputes for real people facing the most challenging period of their lives. It demands sensitivity as well as expertise, and it’s where Queen Elizabeth Building has made its name.

“We’re predominantly known for our family finance work,” explains senior clerk Jon Barlett. In fact, of the cases coming to chambers, “it will be 98% family and 2% civil,” Bartlett tells us. Within that 98%, “probably 80% of that” is finance work. This specialist focus certainly pays off, with QEB awarded a top tier matrimonial finance ranking in the Chambers UK Bar guide.

“We are a financial remedies specialist set generally, but at the very junior end of chambers, you'll be doing a broader spectrum of private family law.”

That said, there’s an important distinction here between being a specialist and having only one area of practice. “We are a financial remedies specialist set generally, but at the very junior end of chambers, you'll be doing a broader spectrum of private family law,” one junior explained. This includes Children Act 1989 applications, private children work and Family Law Act domestic violence injunction applications. Bartlett estimates that 30-35% of work coming to QEB has a multijurisdictional aspect, due to parties having assets abroad or living abroad, but these cases usually go to the more senior members.

Primarily for high net worth individuals and families, the set’s recent work includes Lewis Marks KC’s representation of Dale Vince, green energy industrialist and high-profile donor to the Labour Party, Just Stop Oil and other causes, against his wife’s claim that she was entitled to 50% of all their assets. The court awarded her £41.8 million, or about 37% of their net assets. Elsewhere, James Ewins KC represented the husband in a case in which the wife’s solicitors accidentally applied for a final order of divorce without instructions to do so.

According to one junior: “We are smaller than most of our contemporaries, and that in many respects has been a conscious choice. It keeps a family feel to the set.” That said, there are plans to grow, particularly at the junior end. Change has always been a part of life at QEB too. While the set has specialised in family finance for a long time, the day to day is always changing: “Private FDRs are a massive part of our working day now and they only were invented, so to speak, about 15 years ago, and now there are many fewer High Court trials,” Bartlett adds.

The Pupillage Experience

Pupils complete four three-month long seats. During their first six, pupils mostly follow and observe their supervisor. “Your first seat is very much the learning seat,” a junior explained, “we don't expect anyone to come to chambers with a detailed knowledge of family law because it's actually an area that a lot of people don't study.” Before pupils begin their time at QEB, they receive a reading pack which helps them get up to speed on core case law and provides other helpful pointers. The next two seats are “the engine room,” one junior told us, “it’s an opportunity for the pupil to really show their work, to really get exposure to different supervisors and how they work, but also to start having opportunities to impress.” It’s during this period, as they move into second six, that pupils get on their feet and handle their own cases.

Some supervisors are senior, and others are more on the more junior end to expose pupils to different kinds of cases and different styles of advocacy. Each pupil also gets a junior contact, a barrister two- or three-years post call, who is “their go to person for any queries that they have which they maybe don't want to discuss with their supervisor,” says Fiona Stewart, pupillage recruitment secretary at QEB.

Starting out, pupils at QEB will generally cover the basics, such as ES2s and asset schedules which involves preparing chronologies, drafting questionnaires and generally getting “into the rhythm of understanding how we sift through papers,” a recent pupil informs us. They also work on skeleton arguments, write opinions and attendance notes in court quite early into their first six.

During the second six, pupils spend roughly half their time in court. As well as having their own cases, pupils will go see senior members’ cases across a variety of issues and types like arbitrations, FDRs or even cases in the High Court, to witness them in action. They also shadow junior barristers in court, so they’re ready for their own cases during the second six.

While Wednesdays are anchor days, pupils tend to be in chambers every day they’re not in court and standard working hours for pupils are roughly 8.30am or 9am to 6.30pm. “We have long days because you have a lot to learn in a very short period of time,” explains a recent pupil.

“It taught me to think very specifically about the language that I was using and how I was developing that over the course of the pupillage.”

Informal feedback on almost every piece of work “taught me to think very specifically about the language that I was using and how I was developing that over the course of the pupillage,” noted another.There are formal mid-seat and end-of-seat reviews where the pupil and supervisor go through a checklist that’s modelled on the BSB professional statement and competencies. At the end of the seat, the supervisor prepares a report that goes to the tenancy committee to count towards the tenancy decision.

Two advocacy exercises (an FDR and a conference assessment) and one written exercise make up the formal assessments. A recent pupil described the conference as a Court of Appeal assessment in which the pupil appeals a judgment in front of three silks and the head clerk: “It's incredibly daunting,” one junior confessed, “but it's a brilliant experience. Part of the reason we do that is so it isn’t as scary when you're on your feet.” There’s also an informal advocacy exercise just before Christmas which isn’t assessed like the above. Its purpose is “just to re-practice doing advocacy again because it may have been a while since they did it on the bar course,” says Stewart.

The tenancy decision takes place at the start of the fourth seat and is based on the formal assessments, written reports from supervisors and feedback from other members of chambers with whom the pupil has worked. Supervisors make a non-binding recommendation based on this information, and then the whole of chambers takes part in the vote. Is there a grace period for mistakes? “Oh, completely,” Stewart reassures us. “Particularly given the area of law that we do is so niche, it's very rare to have had much exposure to it.”

The Application Process

QEB recruits through the Pupillage Gateway, which is followed by an initial paper sift where each application form is read and independently marked by three members of chambers who then moderate each others’ marks in a discussion meeting. Usually, around 20 applicants make it to the first-round interview, a 20-minute session in which they respond to a problem question and competency question in front of three junior members of chambers. Speaking about this interview, a recent pupil advised that “reading around the area is helpful, but just your general intuition is really useful and that's what we're looking for.”

“…reading around the area is helpful, but just your general intuition is really useful and that's what we're looking for.”

Ten to twelve candidates go through to the second-round interview which is about 30 minutes long and in front of four members, usually two silks (including one of the heads of chambers) and two juniors. Candidates face a problem question and further competency questions from the panel. One recent pupil described a mixture of “generalist questions” and “interesting, quirky questions that catch you off guard.” To add to that, Stewart tells us: “each of our problem questions are designed to be answered by anyone who's not got any prior knowledge of family law,” being designed “more to see how people think. We are more interested in how they approach it from first principles.”

A top tip from recent pupils? Seek mini pupillages in financial remedies of course, but also those in other areas, “particularly mini pupillages in commercial sets,” due to the overlap in financial matters. “I would strongly advise prospective pupils to try a mini pupillage in financial remedies, in the area of work that we do, and also at a set more focused on children law separately,” says Stewart, echoing this sentiment, “even if you do study family law at university, you don't get a huge amount of exposure to our niche area.”

Having advocacy experience is another big plus, for the applicant as well as the set: “It's all well and good saying that you would like to be a court advocate in the abstract, but until you've actually given it a go in whatever form you can, you don't know if you're going to like it,” one junior added. This doesn’t need to be mooting during a law degree either, taking on other opportunities like those that crop up on pro bono projects also counts.

Daily ‘Chambers Tea’ gives barristers time to chat about their cases and any problems they’re encountering, and monthly QEB breakfasts have much the same function. We heard that the folks at QEB also take advantage of their location by the Middle Temple Gardens to have a drink there on a Friday afternoon and junior barristers and junior clerks quite frequently go out for lunch or drinks together. Formally organised social events include the summer party and marketing events with solicitors.