Twenty Essex - True Picture

Twenty Essex pupillage review 2026

The Chambers

Those familiar with the solicitor’s side of the Chambers Student Guide will know that there are plenty of law firms with offices all over the world, and that often means cross-border work becomes their bread and butter. The Bar side of the profession, however, has always been very different and offices overseas aren’t such a regular occurrence. Twenty Essex breaks the mould, sporting an office in Singapore and specialising in the kind of work that “often involves cross-border elements,” according to practice director Anthony Carroll.

“If oil is found on some uninhabited island, there is debate over who owns this particular piece of land.”

The sort of work that make up the bulk of the practice at Twenty Essex is always evolving, but for Carroll, the set’s focus areas tend to be built around the likes of civil fraud (both litigation and arbitration), commercial disputes, shipping and commodities, and public international law, both of the latter receiving a top-tier nod from the Chambers UK Bar guide in London.

This means that barristers at Twenty Essex could well be dealing with disputes over the very borders their work stretches across: “If oil is found on some uninhabited island, there is debate over who owns this particular piece of land,” co-chair of the pupillage committee, Julian Kenny KC adds. The set also has significant depth in energy, banking and insolvency, and has undergone recent growth in climate change and crypto work, areas which Carroll envisages will keep on expanding in together with its other focus areas, through lateral hires.

On the civil fraud side, Stephen Atherton KC recently acted for the first and fifth defendants in litigation in the British Virgin Islands, including a four-week trial, in a case concerning alleged fraud involving lumber companies operating in Malaysia and Indonesia. Elsewhere, on the public international law side, Daniel Bethlehem KC acted for The Republic of the Marshall Islands in its request for the release of a vessel arrested by Equatorial Guinea in the EEZ of a third State (São Tomé and Príncipe).

The set has grown by about 35% in the past seven and a half years. But growth is not just restricted to barristers; the clerking team, known here as the practice management department, has also expanded. Carroll explains the team is run “a bit differently and more modernly than other Chambers,” split into three different sectors of industry, each with a head practice director. The goal is “to provide a more streamlined experience for clients. As they can call us and be put through to a specific clerk well-versed in the matter at hand.”

The Pupillage Experience

At Twenty Essex, the pupillage is divided into four different seats, which, according to Kenny, “are not unlike school term times.” The aim of the first seat is largely to watch your supervisor and participate in their practice as much as possible. Kenny likens the experience to “a baby duck behind a mummy duck, you follow your pupillage supervisor around and do their work and go with them to every conference. You will work on the pleadings and skeleton arguments they’re working on.” By the second and third seats, you are encouraged to work with supervisors across chambers. Supervisors are matched to pupils through a mixture of interest, personalities and availability.

“…they take the view that pupillage is for you, and that you need to be doing the tasks you would do as a tenant and barrister.”

A pupil’s work is predominantly ‘live’ work, mixed with set training exercises to develop certain skills. The work mirrors that of a practising barrister, so there is a lot of pleadings, advice and skeleton arguments, as well as research notes. We were told by someone who had gone through the process that “they take the view that pupillage is for you, and that you need to be doing the tasks you would do as a tenant and barrister. So, they are constantly checking: have you done enough pleadings, have you covered this area of law?”

The second six at Twenty Essex is non-practising, but this is supplemented with four advocacy exercises that take place over the course of the year. These take place with another pupil but rest assured, it’s not a case of being assessed directly against each other. According to Kenny, these are usually real cases which have been adapted. During the exercise, pupils are asked to create a skeleton argument around a week before and then argue it for about 40 minutes.

A current pupil gave us the inside scoop, telling us: “The first one was daunting, as you don’t know what to expect. But then you start to enjoy them because it feels like your own little case. It’s funny seeing senior members of chambers who are so friendly and nice put their judge mask on.”

“There was active dialogue with my supervisors about how I could improve, who I could work with in chambers and what kind of work I could do to demonstrate the skills I had gained.”

The assessed period runs from September to early July, across a pupil’s first three supervisors, with an unassessed two months after the pupillage decision. During this time, each task a pupil does is assessed and marked to show where they are in relation to the tenancy standard. However, as one pupil explained: “There’s no expectation that you should be reaching that standard from the start, nor to have a particular average mark. It was very rewarding to notice things I found extremely difficult at the beginning; I now find them easy and obvious because of the feedback I have been given.”

One junior tenant, reflecting on their experience, also told us: “There was active dialogue with my supervisors about how I could improve, who I could work with in chambers and what kind of work I could do to demonstrate the skills I had gained. They try to make it interactive and to bring you into the process of your learning.”

Alongside this, the junior tenants currently run a formalised teaching programme which brings together areas of law a pupil may not come across as readily, such as aspects of international arbitration. There are around eight to ten sessions per year, with lectures from senior members of the chambers.

When it comes to the tenancy decision, the general consensus was that it never felt like a competition against fellow pupils, leaving plenty of room to “form a relationship with your co-pupils as you know there is space for everyone.” Kenny explains that: “we take the view that we put a lot of effort into finding and recruiting pupils, so we try to take them on where we can.”

One pupil who had recently been retained told us that the lead-up to the decision was considerably less daunting as a result of having a clear idea of where their scores sat against the tenancy standard throughout the assessed period. We heard decision day is “a real celebration and a happy moment for us.We had champagne on the terrace, and a lot of members came to shake our hand and talk to us.”

“The hours have been standardised,” one pupil told us, “and there is a lot of transparency around that.” Pupils work 9am to 6pm and we heard that there’s never an expectation to work over the weekend: “The point is that we have a strict rule in pupillage: you work normal working hours and you do not take work home,” a junior added.

The Application Process

The major selling point of Twenty Essex’s application process is simpler than you might think. As one pupil put it: “It didn’t take too long!” Anyone who has had to navigate a lengthy application process will understand the appeal straight off the bat, and it’s by design rather than by accident: “We don’t want the application process to be a whole career in itself,” Kenny tells us, “we want it to be relatively undemanding on the candidate’s time.”

The process itself consists only of an application form and an interview, though it’s worth noting that all candidates must complete a mini pupillage at the set before applying, so Kenny advises “keeping an eye on application dates.” Yearly, there are around 200 applicants for pupillage, which is then narrowed down to about 25 at the interview stage.

“It’s the same game you’ll be playing once you’ve been taken on. It’s about being as succinct, precise and logical as you can be, and communicating that with a bit of good humour.”

The interview is based on a fantasy legal situation. In 2025, it was about “a new Criminal Code in Greenland after the US theoretically bought it.” One pupil advised that you should try to think: “am I coming up with a realistic and sensible solution to the problem?” The general consensus was that the process is intellectually stimulating, and candidates are provided with both the problem question and the marking scheme in advance. “It’s the same game you’ll be playing once you’ve been taken on,” Kenny adds, “it’s about being as succinct, precise and logical as you can be, and communicating that with a bit of good humour.”

“Everyone is so nice here,” one pupil told us, “it’s something we take for granted. We all got emails from senior members of chambers telling us they look forward to working with us.” There are also drinks every Thursday evening, and “I genuinely feel like I could call anyone in chambers and go and ask them a question and they’d be happy to help. There’s a strong sense of community.”