Should pupils be paid an allowance? Certainly
This is one story of my pupil-master, Dato Seri Gopal Sri Ram, who was at the time I went to train with him, one of the leading lights of the Bar. Looking back over the decades, the days I spent in his chambers are today as vivid and clear as they were then.
Here is the story of the stipend.
[1] The Stipend
The Stipend is a periodic payment of monies. A pupil’s parent or guardian paid a stipend to a senior lawyer to train his son.
The acolyte was called a ‘pupil-in-chambers’, his professional trainer, a ‘pupil-master’.
[2] Pupillage
The training came to be called ‘pupillage’.
Pupillage is a form of legal training for aspiring barristers, called ‘attorneys’ in the United States.
Pupillages were also precious estates in themselves, if you can call it that.
The greater the reputation of a pupil-master, the grander the status of the pupil, and the better his chances of being employed by a set of barristers.
This attitude exists to this day.
[3] The privilege to practise as barristers
Back in history, it was rare for commoners to be allowed to practise as barristers.
It was the preserve of the educated classes.
Pupils were usually the sons of landed gentry, members of the Bar, or members of the ecclesiastical class.
[4] Pupillage in the early days
Records in the United Kingdom show that legal training for pupils had started long before 1300s, but they were individualised and unregulated.
Senior lawyers often asked their colleagues to train their sons.
There is a record in 1486 of a member of the inner Temple, Humphreys Starkey, asking his colleague and barrister, Thomas Marow, to train his son.
Inns of Court became the sole entry points through which barristers entered the legal profession.
The Inns had existed from ancient times. Records of their inception cannot be stated with any precision [R v. Gray’s Inn (1780) 1 Doug KB 353-354, per Lord Mansfield].
Yet there are records that the Inns of Courts had begun training pupils by 1350. The Inns also allowed the students to live in the Inns. Training could go on for years.
As late as 1847, the accepted custom was for a student to spend a year with the conveyancer or a conveyancing draughtsmen.
Then he had to spend six months each with a special pleader or a common law barrister and a solicitor; and then finally six months with a barrister.
[5] Pupillage is now a mandatory requirement.
It was not until 1959 that pupillage became a mandatory requirement.
However, there were no formal structures for their training.
It was only in 1863 that all four Inns of Court consolidated the regulations.
These rules streamlined the admission of students, the duration of training, and the preconditions for the admission into the Bar, the granting of practice certificates.1Pupillage: a potted history, Guy Fetherstonhaugh QC, June 2 015, ‘Counsel’
There are records in the Inns of Court that each Inn had specific rules about the admission of students and their respective conditions to be called to the Bar.
They were not always uniform.
[6] The training
There are records of trainings lasting several months during the Tudor period.
Three exercises comprised of such training. The first was the ‘moots’, the second was ‘statutes’, and the third was ‘the writ’.
The moots involved elementary exercises and pleading. The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn record a competition that was carried out in 1557.
The Judges of the competition directed that submissions could not contain more than two arguable points. This was to avoid prolixity.
Infractions or failures were punishable by fines.
