Benchmark revisited part 2

The most important shift is when you get taken on as a tenant. That is more significant than any other achievement thereafter, because once you have a place in chambers then unless you do something absolutely catastrophic you are most unlikely to be thrown out. Even if you are, you are fully qualified and therefore able to take a place somewhere else or (if you are senior enough) engage in practice on your own.

How matters proceed thereafter in part depends on the Chambers constitution. Most Chambers treat all tenants equally. That means that from the moment you are taken on, at Chambers meetings you have a vote which is equal to that of the highest earning QC in the place. Of course in reality the Head of Chambers is likely to have more power (since certain power will be delegated to him or her under the constitution) and more senior members may carry more influence both because of practical considerations and the fact that certain members will choose to be guided by and defer to them. If at a Chambers meeting a senior practitioner sets out an argument for what Chambers ought to be doing, it is likely to carry more weight than the comments of someone who has been the tenant for five minutes and has no experience. (Of course the new person may have a good idea which is well reasoned and argued and if they do, it is unlikely to be ignored just because they are junior). There is also the practical consequence of the importance to Chambers of senior practitioners. In one chambers once there was a move by some junior tenants to effectively impose upon senior members (who already paid several times more in Chambers expenses than the junior members did) an even greater burden. This was outvoted (including by the junior members themselves) but would have faced one practical difficulty if implemented. The senior members would simply have moved. The biggest losers would then have been the very junior juniors themselves.

The status of a tenant is also very different as regards both solicitors and clients. Although solicitors realise that every barrister has to start as a pupil, and being a pupil does not mean that you might not be a major star of the future, it does mean that you are relatively inexperienced and have not yet made the grade. Lots of pupils are never taken on as tenants, and for all they know you might be one of those. It also means that they are likely to regard the working relationship as potentially a short one. Once you are a tenant, particularly in a good set of Chambers which that firm uses a lot, a solicitor might see you as a barrister that they might be working with over many years. Needless to say the way you are treated and regarded is accordingly different.

Clients will, if they realise you're a pupil, regard you as someone who isn't properly qualified. Once you are a tenant they will regard you as a proper barrister the same as any other. Client perceptions tend to be a bit absolute in those circumstances. When you are a pupil there will be two types of client that you're working for. Those clients who realise that the case are relatively small and unimportant (for example corporate clients in respect of their very small claims) who therefore will not be surprised that a relatively untried lawyer is undertaking them. Then you will have individual clients, who may have what is a very small and insignificant case, but they do not necessarily see it that way. Since you are a barrister once you have qualified, you can still be legitimately described as a barrister even when you are a pupil (albeit that in your first six months you cannot undertake case). Therefore usually a solicitor will have described you to the client as "a barrister". At least once you are taken on as a tenant you do not have to worry that some client is going to ask you exactly how long you have been a member of your Chambers, since it rarely goes down brilliantly when you have to explain to them that you are not in fact a member at all.