Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
You're not from Oxbridge. If you were, you would have said so instead of being mealy mouthed with "very good UK school". Not being from Oxbridge is strike one against you. Do your own research and look up barristers' profiles from various London chambers. Go and see how many are from Oxford, then see how many are from Cambridge.
The chambers not in London aren't worth joining, because if you're not white then don't expect to get much work thrown your way. Hard truths. But if you think you have the balls to represent council housing types in mags, go for it. Pro tip: they're nothing like HDB flats. Not even close.
Still, and on the off chance you're actually from Oxbridge, go ahead and try for it. Be sure to get first class honours AND a BCL after. Anything less and you can genuinely forget about getting pupillage, to say nothing of tenancy.
Please also do moots - and win them. You have to have something to support "interested in advocacy". A bare statement here, as on your CV, means nothing. And also note the emphasis on winning moots. "Participated in annual uni moot" copypasted for each year of your BA/LLB means nothing at all.
Get all that done and one foot in the door, then you can think of QC. It's hard enough as it is. While you're looking up barristers' profiles, do also see how many of them are Asian. Draw your own conclusions accordingly.
In any event, you probably won't make it because you asked for help here instead of doing your own research. All of this information is easily available from several hours' googling, which you wouldn't think twice about and more if you were genuinely "interested". This is really more for the what-could-have-been types lurking here. |
OP to #15461 here. I never said I wasn’t Oxbridge, I just didn’t think giving specifics of who I am on a public forum would make sense. If I didn’t think I had a chance e at some of the more competitive London sets or haven’t spoken to them at all, I wouldn’t have asked the question. I’ll leave it at that if you don’t mind =]
Having said all of that, I thank you for your insightful post and some of the thoughts you shared. Your tone may not have been great but I’m not silly enough to ignore the useful nuggets of info contained inside it. Very valuable and I’m grateful. I have some data points from my discussions in the UK and desktop searches but every small piece of additional information fills in a small part of the much bigger picture so don’t mind my many questions.
I can’t stress enough that I know it’s a long shot both for QC and SC but a failure to plan is a plan to fail. So the more data points and info, the better. And like I said, one can and should dream, even if critics like to throw brickbats =]
It would be absolutely splendid to have more thoughts from anyone. Including those who can give me a real sense of the odds of making SC in Singapore if I come back from a ‘very good UK school.’ It seems that there are very few appointments each year so even the best are a long shot and I’m finding it difficult to know if it is a remotely realistic aspiration at all.
If anyone knows how the recent attempts at ensuring for QC appointments works for Asians, that would be useful info as well.