MTYBA response to the Consultation on fees and charges for the authorisation and
supervision of Authorised Education and Training Organisations (AETOs) by the Bar
Standards Board
Introduction
The Middle Temple Young Barristers’ Association (MTYBA) is the organisation responsible for representing the interests of Middle Temple’s young barrister members. It does this through organising a range of events, opportunities and financial awards aimed at meeting young barristers’ professional needs, and provides a voice for the young bar in Inn-wide decision-making through MTYBA’s seats on the Inn’s governance committees.
Membership of MTYBA starts automatically from the date of call to the bar by the Inn and runs to seven years post-call. Alternatively, if pupillage is secured within this time the seven year period starts from the date of completion of pupillage. Accordingly, MTYBA members broadly fall into three distinct categories:
i) Pre-pupils: Members who have been called to the bar by the Inn but have yet to secure pupillage. This is the category the majority of MTYBA’s new members fall into.
ii) Pupils: Members who are currently undertaking pupillage, either twelve month or third six.
iii) Tenants: Members who have completed pupillage and are in their first seven years of practice.
MTYBA organises a variety of events and opportunities to cater for each of these membership groups, including: pupillage application advice and mock interviews, educational and CPD events, an advocacy competition, social events, financial award schemes for pre-pupils and junior tenants, a legal jobs and opportunities fair, and events focussing on mental health and wellbeing. MTYBA seeks to represent the interests of those practising at both the self-employed and employed bar.
MTYBA’s function and membership composition mean that the primary issue which will affect MTYBA Members is the changes to the examination of ethics, and the proposed fees for resitting these exams. Moreover MTYBA is concerned with the potential impact on access to the bar which other additional fees charged for the centralised BSB exams will impact on future MTYBA members, and access to the profession generally.
Therefore our response to this paper has been authored by two elected members of our committee: the Pupillage Officer and President. They have prepared this paper through discussion with the MTYBA committee, and by reference to previous consultation exercises with the membership which address similar issues.
MTYBA Response
In preparing this response we have had the benefit of reading the draft response from the Council of the Inns of Court (COIC). Therefore we ask that this response be treated as an endorsement of the view of the COIC response.
We are fundamentally in support of the COIC response, on the issues which directly impact our membership, specifically in the observations and reservations that COIC have aired regarding the move of ethics examination to pupillage.
We also are in support of the specific answers provided by COIC to the questions asked in the consultation. Therefore, we ask that this response be treated as an endorsement of the COIC responses to the questions posed.
MTYBA also wish to stress that they are opposed to any model which passes any fees directly onto students, pupils or indirectly to Pupillage training organisations. They are therefore of the view that there should be no fee for any resits as envisaged by the consultation, and explored in detail in the COIC response.
MTYBA
1 March 2019