Coulson: Widening participation
Candidates should soon be able to apply for the first barrister apprenticeships, it emerged last week at an event that also featured a debate about the existence of ‘imposter syndrome’.
The apprenticeships were approved late last year by the Bar Standards Board and Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.
Speaking at last week’s Westminster Legal Policy Forum on legal education and training, Tim Coulson, chief executive of Cornwall Street Barristers and chair of the barrister apprentice trailblazer group, said they now had an agreed standard and agreed funding.
“We’re just finalising the end-point assessment and hopefully they will be open to candidates in the not-too-distant future.”
Mr Coulson described barrister apprenticeships as a “huge opportunity” and “one of the key tools for unlocking quality and widening participation”.
However, the apprenticeship will be affected by the government’s decision in May to restrict funding for Level 7 apprenticeships, like the barrister offering, to those aged between 16 and 21.
Mr Coulson said he had “a real problem with people coming into my office suffering from impostor syndrome”.
He continued: “It doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. You’re just having confidence issues. It’s almost become a social construct. We create these things in order to keep certain norms going and therefore ‘I can’t do it’. Everyone has crises of confidence.”
Mr Coulson said employers should become “more empathetic” and focus on the individual, and his set of chambers was “spending a lot more time on career development than we ever used to”.
However, Patrick McCann, co-chair of City Century – the City of London Law Society initiative that aims to increase the number of solicitor apprentices – said he did believe in impostor syndrome and had written about it.
“I think it’s about technique, and my technique is ‘inpostor’ syndrome. Working out why you’ve got to where you are should mean the next job is not quite so difficult.”
Mr McCann, who is also chief executive of the City of London Law Society, said he would be speaking to an audience of 130 solicitor apprentices later in the day and would be telling them: “Now that you’ve made it, I want you to go back into your communities and spread the word.
“Role models need to look like the people who are looking at them or someone they know in order for that to work.”
Mr McCann added that he was “more confident now that lower/middle management in law firms” were “on board” with increasing diversity, through mentoring, role modelling and being on recruitment panels, but he was “less convinced about the top level at the moment”.
He pointed to what has been happening in the US – where President Trump has been pushing back hard on diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives – and the impact that’s having here.
“We are seeing visible pull-back from activities which were meant to level up progression here. I worry about what that might do.”
We reported yesterday that US firm Morrison Foerster agreed to pay damages to the Good Law Project and a trans man who its London office had previously agreed to accept as a client in February before allegedly “reneging” on the agreement. Morrison Foerster paid £25,000 damages and costs, but without admitting liability.
Mr McCann also said that if incoming generations of lawyers “stick to what they tell us are their values”, such as social purpose, community and “being able to live a life”, then that could be “quite a powerful force”.
However, just as “certain organisations have apparently stepped back from some of the values they espoused”, the younger generation “might just say ‘Sod it, I’ll just go for the money and I won’t care so much what the social purpose is’.
“If AI takes a number of jobs away, which it might do, who knows what it might change?
“Then maybe the scrabble to get a job might be such that people change their viewpoints on things. I hope not, but I can see that it might happen.”
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