In this exclusive interview, we have the privilege of speaking with Beverley Dawes, the esteemed Head of the Bar Practice Course (BPC) at the University of Law. With over 16 years of experience as a qualified barrister and a wealth of knowledge in legal education and training, Beverley offers invaluable insights into the world of legal academia. Join us as we delve into her background, explore the offerings of the University of Law, and gain expert advice for aspiring barristers embarking on their journey through the Bar. Excerpts:
- Please tell us about your legal background and route to the Bar?
I’m a qualified barrister. I was called to the bar 16 years ago in 2008. Prior to my call to the bar, I did a full-time, dual honours qualifying LLB Law and Criminology degree. After my undergraduate law degree, I went straight on to the Bar course. I did a full-time Bar course for one year and then was called to the Bar in the UK. After my Bar course finished, I started work as a legal aid caseworker, which I did for a short time before my pupillage began in the UK.
I did my pupillage at KBW Chambers, which is based in Leeds in the UK, and my pupillage was a mixed common law pupillage. I did different practice areas, some crime, family, personal injury, immigration, asylum, quite a broad range of different practice areas. My pupillage lasted one year and then at the end of my pupillage I was successfully taken on as a tenant in chambers at KBW in Leeds. And I continued to practice there for several years.
I specialised predominantly in personal injury work, mainly industrial disease work representing claimants who had sustained injuries in the workplace, being exposed to hazardous levels of noise, hazardous chemicals and substances. And then I joined the University of Law. I’ve been at the University of Law since 2016.
- Where is the University of Law based and what courses do you offer?
We are predominantly based in the UK. We are the largest and one of the oldest providers of specialist legal education training in the UK. We are currently known as the University of Law, but many of your readers may know us as the College of Law, which was our former name before we became the University of Law. We have campuses all across the UK and we also have a campus in Hong Kong that opened a few years ago.
We have very good connections all across the globe however even though we are predominantly based in the UK. We have extensive alumni network made up of UK students and students from all around the world and we’ve had students from over 120 different countriescoming to the UK to study with us at the University of Law.
In terms of the courses that we offer we predominantly offer law courses that’s our history that’s our heritage and our main area of specialism, but we also offer business courses, policing courses and some social studies courses including things like criminology and psychology. We offer undergraduate courses as well as postgraduate courses. Our undergraduate programmes include law degrees and other level 4 to 6 degree level qualifications, but we also offer a foundation course for people entering onto an undergraduate degree programme. And then our postgraduate offering is equally as large.
We offer postgraduate courses for students wishing to train as a solicitor, train as a barrister and we have a wide range of master’s level courses as well including traditional academic master’s in law. So, a very broad range of different courses that we offer.
- What Bar course(s) does the University of Law offer?
We offer a BPC, which is our bar practice course, and that is offered full-time and also as a part-time course on the weekend. Our full-time course is offered across eight of our campuses in the UK. They are Newcastle, Leeds, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol.
We also offer a part-time course which is on weekends and that takes place over two academic years and that is offered at our three largest campuses which are our Leeds, Birmingham, and London campuses. We offer multiple start dates, so we offer flexibility and different options to students as to when they start their courses and the pace at which they study for example full-time or part-time. So we currently offer full-time start dates every year in January, July and September and then our part-time weekend course is offered from September every year.
In addition to our BPC course, we also offer a combined LLM with BPC so it’s all of the subjects that you would study on the BPC but in addition you would study some extra modules or write a dissertation or do pro bono work which would qualify you for your LLM masters level qualification. There are three BPC LLMs that we offer, as well as the BPC.
- What advice would you give to students applying for the BPC?
My advice would be to do lots of research and to start the research nice and early. Don’t leave the research and the application process too late because it will be stressful for you, is my main piece of advice. Choosing the right bar course provider is a very personal decision for a student so we always recommend going to things like Open Days so that you can get a feel and a flavour for what the university is like.
For example, us at the University of Law, we regularly offer Open Days, campus visits, and opportunities to ask questions about our bar course so that students can make an informed decision. We offer Open Days face-to-face, physically, at our campuses in the UK, but we appreciate that many students are not currently in the UK, for example international students, so we also have a wide range of online resources, some of which are pre-recorded and we also offer live online open days as well. So my main piece of advice is to do research carefully. Get your application in nice and early.
We have a very quick turnaround at the University of Law for dealing with applications, but we’re conscious that students need to make personal arrangements as well with things like accommodation, so it’s always a good piece of advice to apply nice and early. We also recommend to students that they do research into the Inns of Court nice and early, and some students don’t always realise that they have to be a member of one of the four Inns of Court to be able to complete a bar course and they can start doing that research and join an Inn of Court before the BPC even begins.
I always recommend that students have a look on the four Inns of Court websites directly if they are in the UK and are able to travel to London, reach out to the Inns of Court and ask if you’re able to perhaps have a tour or meet with somebody from the Education Department to see which Inn you would like to apply to become a member of. And the final piece of advice I would give is about financial support. We appreciate bar training is very expensive. I would recommend that students do research into the wide range of scholarships, bursaries and financial support that’s available.
For example, for us at the University of Law we have a significant pot of scholarship and bursary money available to help students who need that additional financial support. Many of our scholarships are merits or means tested. There’s full information on our website so we do try to help students with informing them about the financial support that’s available. There were also scholarships available through the four Inns of Court I mentioned earlier, and we always recommend a good piece of advice to students is to look into those scholarships nice and early because a scholarship from the Inns can be paired with a scholarship from for example the University of Law so there’s lots of financial support available for students.
We regularly have international students not just from Mauritius but from other non-UK countries as well scholarships and we do have BPC specific scholarships so just for BPC students which are open to student applications from all around the world and we’ve had several international students who have received those BPC advocacy scholarships so they’re definitely available for everybody.
- How does the University of Law support students during their BPC?
We think it’s very important that students feel supported during their studies. The BPC is a challenging course, it’s very fast-paced, it’s very demanding, so we have lots of different support systems, services, teams and schemes available to support students during their BPC.
For example, students are allocated an individual academic coach from the start of the year. That’s their first point of contact for any problems, any queries, any support that they need throughout their course of study. The academic coach acts like a personal tutor to them. They’re able to meet with them regularly, they’ll provide academic references in support of any job applications, for example, and they’ll have a very close relationship throughout the course.
We also have support services such as a counselling team, a wellbeing team, we have a dedicated finance team for any students with finance issues or difficulties, we have a visa team for international students who are coming to the UK to study on a student route visa and then on campus of course there’s all the academic support as well so students will build very good relationships with subject lecturers we also have library facilities with library workshops and support available for things like legal research, different study skills we have a dedicated study skills team so there is a huge amount of support available for students studying on the course.
- How does the University of Law set students up for success after completion of the BPC?
I think the main thing is about the practical skills that we teach students during the BPC. Because of course we want students to be prepared for their assessments on the course, but we are preparing them for a career, hopefully at the bar, but if not the skills that they learning are very transferable into different areas. The BPC is a vocational course, it’s not really an academic law programme, it’s a vocational skills-based course.
The students are learning written and oral skills, presentation skills such as advocacy, how to conduct a conference with a client and then written skills including giving written advice, drafting documents, conducting legal research, etc.
All of those written skills are very transferable, and we believe that they are setting students up for success as a barrister after the course finishes or indeed whichever area they go into. We also have a dedicated employability team which is our careers support service at the university and that is a fundamental part of preparing students for success after the course.
The service offers a lot of different support to students including things like mock interviews, reviewing CVs, they organise events such as law fairs, guest speaker events, networking opportunities as well as things like shadowing schemes, so there’s a huge amount of support available there and all of that is with the aim of preparing students for applying for work after the course.
Most or many of our students go on to complete pupillage after the course but many go into other sectors legal or otherwise so the support that’s offered by the employability team is really setting the students up for success after the course.
