The first remote advocacy exercise I am going to run is for students, ideally A-Level, undergraduates, GDL or BPTC students. If you are someone that has completed the BPTC but not started pupillage yet, please also feel free to apply. I will be running something separately for current pupils in the near future.
The first exercise is going to be conducted via Zoom. It is available to download for free, you just need access to a device with a camera. I am going to do an advocacy practical for ten students who I will divide into five pairs. The exercises will take place between 8th and 13th April, at a time to accommodate the different pairings. The exercise will take about half an hour per pair.
The process to apply is by sending an email to internship@9sjs.com. The subject header in the email should be “Student Workshop 1”. In the body of the email simply tell me your name, your current status (e.g. BPTC student/undergraduate at The University of Twittersville) and your preferred email address. That is all I need.
The ten who will be invited to participate will be selected entirely at random. I will email the selected participants to let them know they have been successful. The closing date for applications is 4pm this Sunday, 5th April. I will notify those successful on 6th April.
The workshop will deal with one of the areas that many struggle with at first – examination in chief. I will send a guide to examination in chief and the material for the exercise to each participant. You will need to do some preparation and the whole point is that you will be doing a piece of advocacy during the workshop. So be prepared and don’t be shy!
For those that are not selected, don’t worry. During the course of the lockdown I will be offering further opportunities, including similar workshops. Just follow me on Twitter for updates. And for the pupils out there, your workshop will be announced next week.
Good luck and I look forward to meeting ten of you in an appropriate social distance setting!
A view from the North 
Great initiative. Congratulations!
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I think that you are being incredibly misguided in encouraging these youngsters to pursue a career at the criminal bar.
It is already hugely overmanned and grossly underpaid, and is only going to get worse when the bill for CV19 needs to be paid.
The criminal bar is basically dying, like candle-stick makers, greengrocers and TV repairmen in days of yore. Any student shouldn’t be warned in no uncertain terms that they should abandon any thought of a career at the criminal bar.
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Dear Mr. Hamilton,
I wanted to ask how I could go about networking with you and possibly picking your brain on how a mature candid it using a non-traditional route could come to the bar?
Your thoughts and kindness would be deeply appreciated.
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