Call to the bar and pupillage task

This is one of the tasks in the personal information task list.

We ask barristers for:

• the year they were called to the bar
• the start date of their second six months of pupillage - this is commonly known as their ‘second six‘

Solicitors instead get asked about their year of admission to the roll of solicitors. There is no equivalent question to the one about pupillage.

As a result, the task will be named ‘Admission to the roll of solicitors’ if the user says that they’re a solicitor.

Why we ask for this information

The information in this task is used by CPS staff as part of checks that the applicant is a genuine barrister or solicitor.

The question about pupillage is also important for general crime level 1 applications. The aim is to prevent trainee barristers from applying too soon.

A barrister’s pupillage is carried out in 2 sets of 6 months. They are not allowed to work in court until the start of their ‘second six’.

How these questions are asked in the current service and the new design

We made some significant changes to how these questions are asked.

These changes have led to some issues, which are covered in the ‘further considerations’ section of this design history entry.

The current service

The current service asks a question about pupillage right at the start, before the user signs in or creates an account.

It asks users applying for general crime level 1 to confirm that:

“I have reached at least the fifth month of my first six months of pupillage/tenancy, or am a solicitor with a Higher Courts Advocacy qualification.”

The service does this so that the user does not start an application if they have not progressed far enough in their pupillage.

Once they reach the application form, all users find a section called ‘Professional qualifications‘. In it they’re asked for the year they were called to the bar or admitted to the roll of solicitors. This is the only question in this section.

If the user is a barrister applying for level 1 general crime then they’ll also be asked for the start date of their second six months of pupillage. This appears in the ‘Personal details’ section which also asks for their name and bar number.

The new design

We decided not to ask the question about whether a barrister has reached the 5th month of pupillage.

We no longer have pre-sign in questions. We thought we could deal with this using a task in the personal information task list.

If the user entered a date for their second six which is too far into the future, we could take them to a page explaining that they could not carry on with their application. This page was not included in research and was not added to the prototype.

We also decided to combine the questions for barristers into one task, since they’re related. We do not have a ‘personal details’ task, instead we’ve split the questions into:

• name and reference number (either bar number or Solicitors Regulation Authority number)
• call to the bar and pupillage (for barristers) or admission to the roll of solicitors (for solicitors)

Further considerations for the call to the bar and pupillage task

We should:

• move the pupillage question to the application form task list
• consider asking barristers their bar exam grade
• consider how the screening question in the current service works for solicitors
• consider whether we could stop asking more experienced barristers about when they were called to the bar
• find out whether the new design helps users to give the correct date for their ‘second six’

Moving the pupillage question to the application form task list

After the prototype went into testing, we discovered that the ‘second six’ question is only relevant to level 1 general crime applications.

In the new design, we do not ask which panel and level the user is applying for until after the personal information task list has been completed.

This means that we have to ask all barristers the pupillage question if it’s in the personal information task list.

We know from research that some experienced barristers prefer not to be asked questions about their early career. In this case an experienced barrister is likely to need to look up the answer, since we ask for an exact date which may be a long time in the past.

We should move this question into the application form task list, where it can be shown only to appropriate users.

One issue with doing this, however, is that a barrister in training might get as far as the application form before finding out that they cannot actually apply for level 1 general crime.

We do not know how often this will happen. It might be rare enough that we do not need to do anything about it.

If we find that there’s a significant risk of an ineligible user continuing to the application form then we could consider things like:

• guidance on the start page to deter trainee barristers from applying too soon
• adding a screening question to the personal information task list, along the lines of the one in the current service

Asking barristers their bar exam grade

We know that some assessors would prefer to know the applicant’s bar exam grade. They feel that it would help in their assessment.

The question was previously asked but has been removed from the current application form.

We could consider reintroducing the question, either here or in the qualifications task.

We’d need to know more about the benefits of asking for it and any issues which it may cause.

How the screening question in the current service works for solicitors

The current screening question for level 1 general crime does not just refer to barristers. It also gives the possibility that the user is “a solicitor with a Higher Courts Advocacy qualification.”

We did not include this since we were designing the prototype primarily to work for barristers.

In the next phase of work we’ll need to do work on the journeys for solicitors. This is one of the things which needs to be considered.

Stopping asking more experienced barristers about when they were called to the bar

We know from research that more experienced barristers sometimes ask why we need to know the year they were called to the bar. They feel that their work history is a better measure of experience.

We could explore the idea of only showing this question for lower level applications. This would mean moving the question to the application form task list, since we’d need to know what level panel the user is applying for.

Before proposing this we’d need to find out about how assessors use the information.

Helping users give the correct date for their ‘second six’

We know from CPS administrators that users often enter the incorrect date for their ‘second six’. They instead enter the date when they started their pupillage.

We think that it will be easier for users to focus on the questions now that they’re in tasks rather than one long application form.

However, we should find out whether this causes users any problems. This could be something to keep an eye on in private beta.