Senior Prosecutor - Mark Humphries

Careers in Law can be very different depending on the type you practice and the size of the firm you join. Solicitors tend to be the first port of call for legal matters whether personal or corporate and they liaise with clients to try and resolve their problems or provide a legal framework for something they want to achieve.

Barristers are called in by solicitors for their expertise in a particular area of the law or to argue a case in court. That said, the distinction between the two is narrowing slightly due to the increasing scope for solicitors to conduct their own litigation.

Like many of the professions, law offers a great deal of flexibility in terms of where you practice so you don’t have to be in the centre of a large city to have a successful career. You can practice in large firms servicing business, within the businesses themselves as an in-house lawyer or at a high street practice overseeing the matters of private individuals.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the type of firm and specialty of law you practice will have a huge impact on what your daily life is like. A private equity solicitor in a magic circle firm is going to be spending a lot more time in the office than a high street solicitor. Commercial barristers were one of the biggest shocks to us. We hadn’t quite grasped just how individual the job is and the huge hours it demands. A 6 day working week appears very standard.

Law is well known as a lucrative industry and many firms seem to have coped with the credit crunch well. As a guide, if you’re a solicitor in a top 50 city firm then on your first rotation expect a salary in the £35-40,000 range. Newly qualified's will be in the sixties and three year post qualified can be anywhere from £80-110K. Salaries in the smaller high-street firms are quite a bit lower. Barristers are self-employed so their income can vary hugely but the industry stars could give David Beckham a run for his money.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Mark Humphries, I am a barrister and I currently work for the CPS as an employed barrister. I used to be self-employed and before that I was in Chambers in London.

What is The Law?

It’s the regulation of Society really. It’s the way in which we decide what people can and can’t do. It’s a set of rules that apply to everybody and that give us a structure – the basis on which society is based.

What attracted you to this career?

I think it’s the challenge, the involvement with people and I think that the variety is interesting, every day is different and you never really know what you are going to get what you’re going to be doing. I think that the career is very interesting because the sort of decisions that I am asked to make and the sort of role that I play makes a difference in the grand scheme of things. I think it’s a misjudged motivation to go into criminal law because you want to do good or to make a difference. It does make a difference, your job makes a difference and the way you conduct yourself has a huge impact. If you’re a very good advocate and you get the right result for your client then that has consequences for all of the people in the case but I think it’s wrong to go into the job thinking “I am going to do good” because you may be representing somebody who you think is guilty and if they are found not guilty then you haven’t achieved your aim. So it’s a very interesting job from that point of view, it’s a very significant and worthwhile job but it’s not one where you can sit back and think “I have done good for society” every day.

What does your job involve?

The job I have at the moment – I’m a senior crown prosecutor in the CPS - involves going to court, to the magistrate’s court, presenting cases on behalf of the prosecution, so, prosecuting criminal offences. I also go to the Police station and advise on charging which is a relatively new system that has come in the last few years. It used to be that the police would decide whether to charge somebody or not but now lawyers like me go to the police station and we sit down with the police, review all the evidence and decide whether or not there is enough evidence to charge somebody with an offence. If there is enough evidence then we decide what the appropriate charge is. It’s quite an involved process and it can be quite pressured because the police make an appointment – they have a slot – and you have to review all the evidence, decide what to charge if you are going to charge and write up a report, and do all that within an hour and then be ready for the next appointment which will be an hour after the first one started. So that can be quite pressured but quite enjoyable as well. I also spend time in the office preparing cases to make sure they are ready for court. So it’s a very different job to the one that I had before. When I was a self-employed barrister I would just go to court. I would deal with trials and pre-trial hearings. I would be in court every day whereas now I’m in court a couple of days a week, spending a couple of days charging and the other day in the office.

What do you do on a typical day?

Well again, the job that I’m doing is quite different from the job I had before. Now I do have a more regular working day. If I’m in the police station it’s 9 – 5 so I need to be there at 9, finish at 5 and they are hour slots so although it can be a very intense and tiring day, the advantage is that I know I’m going to finish at 5.00pm. The court days again are regular in that the court sits for certain hours but the preparation that is involved in getting everything ready for court can take a lot longer than you might expect so I may do that the night before, or I may do it early in the morning depending on what sort of court it is I would be preparing for. The CPS are very structured in the way that they organise lawyers time. Before when I was self-employed, I would arrange my own time to fit around commitments and if I had to do a lot of preparation the night before then that would be in the evening at home and I would work on that basis. As things are now, I have to bill, or account for my hours I should say, so I fill in a timesheet and if I work longer some days it means I can work less on other days. I’m supposed to work a 37 hours a week and if I work more than that I can take time off and if I work less than that then I’m in trouble! But, it’s quite easy to work 37 hours a week and accrue extra time off so that’s quite enjoyable because I know that if I work longer than I am paid for then I will get extra time off.

Where do you get your cases from?

A case would come to me at the moment directly from the police, so if I was charging the police would bring me paperwork and evidence and I would discuss with them the case and we would look at all the evidence and ultimately I would decide whether a case should be prosecuted or not and if so what the charge would be. If I was an employee of the CPS as I am going to court then the case would come from the police as a completed file. I would then look at that file and present the evidence in court. If I was a self-employed barrister and I was defending as well as prosecuting the case could either come to me from a defence solicitor who would prepare a brief, send that through to chambers who would then give me the paperwork and I would go to court and represent that person. If I was prosecuting the case would come from the Crown Prosecuting Service; again a brief would arrive and I would present the case on the basis of that brief.

Who do you liaise with on a daily basis?

If I was charging in the police station I would be working very closely with the police and if I was in court I would be working closely with the solicitor or barrister who is presenting on the other side...with the usher at court, with the clerk/legal adviser at court and with the magistrates ultimately because those are the people I am presenting the case to. So it really depends on the sort of work I am doing. If I was in the office then I would be working very closely with the administrative staff and the other people working in the office that day so it really depends on what sort of work I happen to be doing.

What's the difference between a solicitor and a barrister?

It depends on the sort of law you are doing. As a criminal practitioner, the difference is that solicitors tend to deal with more paperwork and magistrates court work and police stations as a criminal solicitor. As a criminal barrister you would spend more time in court. A solicitor would spend more time in the office and a barrister more time in the court but it depends on the sort of law that they chose to specialise in. A commercial barrister for example wouldn’t go to court anywhere near as much as a criminal barrister so it depends on the specialisation.

How did you decide between becoming a solicitor or barrister?

That’s a decision you do need to make fairly early on because there are different training processes, so if you want to be a solicitor you do the legal practice course and if you want to be a barrister you do the bar vocational course. They are quite different and quite difficult to transfer – you can transfer but there are exams and further qualifications that you need to take in order to make that switch. I decided I wanted to be a barrister because I wanted to be in court and I wanted to be working with people. If I was a solicitor I would be doing that, I would be in court less and I think that the opportunity to go and represent people in court is something that very much appealed to me. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and I think a lot of people would much rather deal with the client in the office, get everything ready for trial, see them in the police station and so on and would be happy dealing with that, rather than going to court, picking everything up at the last minute and running with it and presenting a case to magistrates and to a jury.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

Family law, commercial law, negligence, media – there are a whole range of different sorts of specialisations.

What different roles are there in the CPS?

Within the CPS there are obviously managers; there are a whole range of different levels of lawyer. There are designated case workers who have relatively new powers to go to court and present cases in the magistrate’s court. Their powers are increasing so that they are able to deal with more serious cases and make more decisions in court. There are also a large number of administrative staff and there are staff who deal with all of the preparation of the case before it gets to court.

What are the best bits about your job?

The best parts are I think that no day is the same as the day before, that I’m working with people and I’m dealing with real life scenarios. It’s a very interactive job, I deal with lots of different sorts of people every day and I enjoy that variety.

What are the worst bits about your job?

I think the worse parts are that it can be extremely stressful and there are times when it can all seem a little too much, particularly when you are dealing with significant difficulties with cases, serious matters that require a lot of thought and difficult decisions have to be made under pressure in a short time frame and that can be difficult. For example, you may not have as long to prepare a case as you might like – that can be quite stressful because the feeling of not being as prepared as you’d like is not a comfortable one and often you have to make compromises and do the best that you can in the time that you are given. There are no shortcuts to preparation so it’s important to do as much as you can but it’s not a perfect world and sometimes we do have to go to court without having done as much as we’d like to so that can be stressful. The fact that it’s an adversarial profession has its own problems because you never quite know what’s going to be thrown at you, particularly when you are prosecuting. I may pick up a case, look at the papers and think that this person is clearly guilty and those are often the most worrying ones because, I think, “well, they’ve pleaded not guilty, I must be missing something – there is some gap here in the evidence or there is something I don’t know about.” So that can be stressful, preparing the case when you don’t really know what the issues are or what is going to be thrown at you the next day.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I think there are a number of occasions where I’ve been pleased with my performance. I went to the court of appeal when I was very junior, I was still in training, I was a pupil and I had to go to present a case – an appeal against sentence – and I had really never done any sort of advocacy at that level and one of my more senior colleagues talked me through the process the night before and I went off and argued successfully (I was defending) and the sentence was overturned and the appeal was successful. So I was pleased with that because it was something I managed to achieve with very little experience and I think it was a good boost for my confidence. There were other trials that I have successfully defended and prosecuted and I think that feeling of knowing that you have a good result for the client or that if you’re prosecuting the right result has been achieved, that’s a very satisfying feeling and I feel proud when I’ve done that and I’ve done my job well.

Any regrets?

I think I would have tried to maybe have a broader pupillage to begin with. I initially applied to a set that specialised in family law and criminal law. By the time I started my pupillage with that set they just did criminal law so my only exposure was to criminal law. I am pleased with that choice, I enjoy criminal law very much but I think it would have been an advantage to have seen some other sorts of law as well, to add some strings to my bow, that would have been useful. So I probably would have done that differently I think. But having worked at the self-employed bar and been a barrister in London I am pleased I did that because it has given me exposure to a much broader range of courts and of people and I think it’s certainly helped me to get the job in the CPS that I have now. I’ve only been there 6 months but I’ve enjoyed it since I’ve been there and I’m pleased with that decision to move out because it’s given me a lot more security, fixed income, much less travel, a much more regular working day and all of those things I enjoy, but I’m still doing a similar job to the self-employed job that I had before. As a law student, you would be applying for pupilages at different sets of chambers. The CPS now do offer pupilage as well in-house. That’s a relatively new scheme as I understand it, it’s only running for a couple of years and I think it’s quite competitive to get a pupilage with the CPS. As a student you would need to decide what sort of law you were interested in and then apply for pupilages with those particular sets. So you would need to make a decision early on about where to apply on the basis of the broad sorts of law you were interested in.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

The pay is not as good as people think it is, particularly in the public sector. The pay is regulated by the government in one way or another. The government wants to cut the amount of expenditure it has on legal aid and is continuing to reduce that. I think that it’s important to remember that a commercial lawyer working for a big city firm is going to earn an awful lot more money than even a reasonably successful barrister doing criminal law, simply because criminal law is paid for from the public purse and commercial law generally isn’t. But there are advantages; there is a very good pension scheme, there is also good holiday – the working week as I have said is supposed to be 37 hours per week and if you work more than that then you can accrue extra holiday. The holiday allowance irrespective of the extra flexi-time is 25 days per year for me, so that’s a decent amount of holiday. If you’re self-employed you can take as much time off as you like in theory but the reality is that if you’re running your own business you’re not necessarily going to do that because you want to keep things running and to make as much of it that you can. Other perks are that it’s a very sociable place to work, my colleagues are very friendly and there’s a good social life and I think it’s a reasonable work/life balance compared to some other jobs. As a criminal law solicitor you would generally earn less than a criminal law barrister. As a self-employed barrister with the CPS you would probably earn slightly less than you would if you were a self-employed barrister but the upside is that you get a very good pension which is something that if you were self-employed you would have to fund separately and you also get the security of knowing that there’s going to be a regular pay check every month. When I was self-employed in London the income was very sporadic. Some months you may receive very little money and other months you may receive a huge cheque. So it’s difficult to financially plan and to manage your money - a lot of barristers get by on a big overdraft because life goes on, bills have to be paid and that’s just the way it is. It’s much easier to manage with a regular income.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

I’m not on call. I have chosen not to work a Saturday court so that’s an option I would get paid more for if I wanted to do that but I don’t work weekends. I occasionally work in the evenings but it’s pretty much a 9-5 sort of job as much as it can be taking into account the nature of the work. Criminal law and cases tend to come in at the last minute so that sort of last minute preparation does often have to be done at the last minute and it means that sometimes I have to stay a bit later and start a bit earlier but the expectation is that it will be a 9-5 working week with those sorts of hours being done.

Is there much in the way of travel?

If I was a self-employed barrister there’s lots of travel involved. Particularly in London, I would travel to outer lying courts, Home Counties as well as Central London courts so I would spend a lot of my day travelling when I was working before in London. As an employed barrister with the CPS I travel a little bit locally but generally it’s all based in Bristol and some of the surrounding towns but really not a lot of travelling at all. There isn’t much scope to travel from one office to another on a daily basis although it’s very much possible to transfer from one CPS office to another CPS office and move within the organisation in that way. But I don’t think there is very much opportunity for travel abroad with criminal law because it’s so specific to each country. It’s quite difficult to move to a different country and pick up criminal law. It’s not very transferable.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

You can be regional with it and it’s the sort of job where it can be to your benefit to work out of London. London is a very competitive market, there are lots of barristers there and a limited amount of work to go around. I think that the perceived wisdom is that if you were are based in London ultimately if you were very successful then you would end up doing the biggest cases, the sort of very high profile Old Bailey trials that you read about in the papers. But at a more general level, out of London, most people can earn a better living because there is more work to go around and less competition for it.

What is the working environment like?

Where I was working before the working environment was more formal. Most people, if they were in chambers would be there after court so would be wearing a suit and tie. There was a very formal atmosphere in terms of the way that barristers were addressed by the other people who worked there, by the clerks and administrative staff. We were always referred to by our second names, so it would be Mr so and so, Miss so and so, Sir and Miss. So from that point of view it was quite formal though that was underpinned by quite a good sense of humour so although it had the appearance of formality it wasn’t really that formal. My current working environment is very different in that there is a dress down policy and people can wear what they like to the office and some people do. So if you’re somebody who doesn’t like dressing up to go to work then that’s a good point. My colleagues are very friendly. There isn’t that divide between staff. There isn’t an “upstairs/downstairs” feeling as I call it with the other staff so everybody shares a huge open-plan office, has the same size desk, there’s no discrimination in terms of hierarchical positioning, people just get on with it and everyone mucks in together which in some ways is much nicer.

Do you have to wear a wig and gown?

I have to wear a wig and gown if I’m in the Crown Court. At the moment, the job I’m doing for the CPS I’m not in the Crown Court, I’m in the Magistrates Court so I don’t wear a wig and gown there but when I’m in the Crown Court and when I was there before I do have to wear a wig and gown.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

Working for the CPS there are opportunities for career breaks and there are certainly opportunities to take time out. That’s something that’s very much available. As a self-employed barrister there is less scope to take a career break and the average barrister wouldn’t do something like that because it’s a business, if you step away from it then people are going to stop instructing you so that when you came back from your career break or your year in the Himalayas or wherever you would have to start building your business again. So you could do it and it’s certainly possible but it wouldn’t help your career necessarily. I wouldn't say that it was very easy necessarily to go into other businesses with the skills. I think they're broadly transferable in that building an ability to deal with people and building an ability to deal with cases under pressure, to assimilate a lot of information very quickly and present it in an understandable way - those kind of skills are transferable but I don’t think it's something you could just walk out of and into another job. It isn't as transferable I don't think as say being a commercial lawyer where you could go and work in-house for a big company that uses the same legal skills that you've built up. It's not transferable in a direct sense but in an indirect sense it is and I think it's something that people would be impressed by if they saw it on your CV.

What's the difference between the Crown court and the Magistrates court?

The magistrates court is the court that deals with the majority of criminal offences, it deals with the lower level trials and it deals with all cases from the very beginning. So any case whether it's a rape or a murder or criminal damage would start off in the magistrates court. With criminal damage if the defendant pleaded not guilty they'd have their trial most likely in the magistrates court. If it was a murder it would go straight to the Crown Court but it would pass through the magistrate’s court on the way. The more serious cases would go to the Crown Court and there would be a trial there. In the Crown Court there would be a jury and a judge and the case would be presented to the jury by the barristers or the solicitor advocates because they can now appear in the Crown Court as well. So that would be a much more formal process, a much longer process having a trial in the Crown Court and the jury would have to hear all the facts and decide on the basis of the evidence they have heard whether they are sure that the defendant is guilty. The judge would play a role in deciding on all the legal applications on directing the jury and deciding on admissibility of evidence and all those sorts of issues. In a magistrates court it would be a lay bench of magistrates so three people who are trained as magistrates but not as lawyers who sit and they decide everything. So they decide on all the legal issues leading up to the trial, they decide on the admissibility of evidence all those sorts of things and then they decide on whether they think the person is guilty or not. So it’s a shorter process and in some ways a less formal process but it’s the way the majority of offences are dealt with because there are so many of them.

How did you get into your job?

I had to get a good result in my degree because criminal law is still competitive and there would be lots of people looking to get into that marketplace. Getting the best degree that you possibly can is the way forward. You don’t necessarily need a law degree – a lot of people don’t have a law degree and in some ways it’s an advantage because it means you’ve got something else to talk about when you're being interviewed – you can go and say “I did my degree in...whatever it is” and if somebody has a particular interest in that who is interviewing you then that is another thing for you to discuss. So I would say to anybody who’s considering a career in law to do the degree that they think they would get the best result in or are most interested in because ultimately if you’re interested in something you’re going to get a good result. If you did a non-law degree you would have to do a conversion course to enable you then to go on and train to be a barrister and do the bar vocational course. Once you finish the bar vocational course you apply to get a pupillage which is the beginning of the training in order to become a barrister.

What's the application process like?

The application process for pupillage is generally speaking a centralised online application form that has to be filled in. There are standard questions and there is a standard amount you can write on that form. Those forms are then despatched by the central organisation to chambers and then members of chambers or a committee, a pupillage committee usually, will look at those applications and decide how they are going to mark them and decide what their criteria are and try to be fair in the way that they approach all of them. They will then select a number of candidates for interview and there will be one or two rounds of interviews for those candidates. If a candidate is successful at that stage they will be offered pupillage and that would be training of a year. For the first six months the training is spent following somebody else from chambers to court, seeing how the process works, doing paperwork for a pupil supervisor. The second six months is spent at court and that can be quite daunting. It’s a bit of a baptism of fire as it means that the pupil is given their own case, sent off to usually the magistrate’s court, sent off to defend or prosecute usually in a relatively minor application to begin with but throughout those six months they would build up experience and start doing small trials in the magistrates court. It’s a very steep learning curve to begin with but it does have the advantage of meaning that you’re getting in amongst it early and getting a real flavour for the job early on. The downside is that there is no security with a pupillage and particularly in chambers in London if you are offered pupillage it doesn’t mean that you’ll be offered a permanent place (tenancy) – there are still another set of interviews to go through before you are admitted as a member chambers and a good number of people don’t get a tenancy after they’ve done pupillage so the downside is that you can invest a lot of time in getting to know your new colleagues and doing your best to impress them and at the end of the year you could not get a permanent place in chambers - not necessarily because you’re not any good, just simply because there isn’t enough work for you or there isn’t enough space in chambers or there was somebody else who was a pupil at the same time who was just that little bit better. So it can be a very insecure time. If you didn’t get a tenancy after your 12 month pupillage you can do a third 6 pupillage which is the same as a second 6 really but it’s in another set usually because if you’ve not got into the set where you did 12 months, most people would go somewhere else and try and see if they could get into a different set of chambers. Again you would be going to court every day, doing court appearances for less serious matters but trying to get to know and impress your colleagues and really it’s like an extended interview which is why it can be quite exhausting because that whole time you’re trying to impress the people you’re working with, keeping the clerks and solicitors happy and doing your best to do everything right so that can be a very tiring time.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

The top tips are probably to do your best to get on with your colleagues, particularly the solicitors and the clerks and I think a lot of people forget that if you’re working for an independent set of chambers you are part of their business and they want to keep their clients and solicitors happy and really they’re interested in somebody who is a safe pair of hands and are not going to get it horribly wrong and you’re not going to lose them business that they’ve spent years building up. So it’s very important to remember that solicitors may well have a different view of a case to you and ultimately you are the person, as the barrister, who has to make the final decisions but you have to have good diplomatic skills in order to make sure that you can do your job and they can do their job and you’re not going to put anyone’s nose out of joint and mean that chambers is going to lose business. That’s very important – I think if you did come across too strong or make life difficult for somebody you were working with that’s going to be fatal in your application to stay on as a tenant, so definitely don’t do that. I think just be the sort of person that people would like to work with. One of my top tips whilst doing a pupillage is to remember how important the clerks are because they control your career and if you get on the wrong side of them then you could be destined to spend the rest of your life working for very little in some God forsaken court in the middle of nowhere so it’s very important to remember how important they are.

What does a barristers clerk do?

The barrister’s clerk liaise with the solicitors and the branches of the CPS who send the work into chambers and they have a lot of control in how that work is allocated. A solicitor may ring up and ask for a particular barrister but if that barrister is not available, the clerk will re-allocate. The clerk will also market barristers so if they think you’re particularly good or they get on particularly well with you, you may well get preferential treatment over somebody else. It’s important to remember how they operate and how important they are and how much control they have. As I have said there is a slight “upstairs/downstairs” element to it with clerks in some sets of chambers being not on first name terms with their barristers, referring to them as “Miss.... and Sir....” but despite all that apparent illusion of respect they do hold all the strings.

What are the key skills required for your job?

As a barrister practicing criminal law you are working with people all the time so it’s extremely important that you do get on with everybody, whether it be a crown court or high court judge, to your criminal damage burglar, whoever, you need to be able to relate to everybody, the clerks, the solicitors, the judges, the clients and the jury of course which is extremely important as you need to come across well to the jury. They’re the people who are going to decide in a criminal case in a crown court whether somebody is guilty or not and you’re really selling an idea to them, you're selling the idea that somebody is guilty or not guilty and it’s your presentation skills and your ability to put yourself across well that is very important.

Are there any other important traits people need for the job??

It’s important to be somebody who can digest a lot of information in a short period of time and is able to pick out the wheat from the chaff, who can sit there and say “This is what this case is about, these are the key points and this is how I’m going to attack it and analyse it”. It’s very important to be able to do that under pressure and to be able to pick out the threads of the case and present them in an effective way.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

Working in the CPS there are a number of career opportunities and there is a very structured environment there so I could apply for more senior positions as time goes on. There are more managerial positions available and those jobs are advertised internally and externally and there is a formalised recruitment process for those jobs. So you could go on eventually if you wanted to, to become Chief Crown Prosecutor for a particular area and with responsibility across that whole county, district or whatever. So there is that sort of opportunity within the organisation. There are moves afoot to change the system so that barristers and solicitors who work within the CPS can apply to be judges; at the moment they can’t be but I read recently there are moves to change that. As a self-employed barrister there is a less structured career path. You would build your business or your practice by impressing solicitors and impressing branches of the CPS who may chose to send you work and move up in that sense. You could apply to become a QC, you could apply to become a recorder which is a part-time judge and then in due course you could apply to become a judge if that was something that interested you. Lots of people, in fact most people don’t go on to become judges, but there is that ability to build your business as a barrister and become very successful in that sense. The level of work and the seriousness of the cases would change. Obviously as an individual, you build more experience you would then be able to deal with more serious cases and that’s one of the really good things about the job as it does continue to challenge and there are always new factual scenarios that you haven’t dealt with before. The law changes increasingly quickly and there are more and more new laws to deal with so from that point of view it is the sort of job that does keep you on your toes and it is continually challenging which is one of the things I like about it.

Where do you see the industry going?

In terms of hotspots, criminal law is one of those areas that everybody is interested in, the general public is interested in crime and punishment, crime and disorder, but unfortunately nobody wants to have pay for it so most criminal work is publicly funded, the government pays for it in one way or another whether it’s directly through the CPS to me or indirectly through solicitors and the CPS to self employed barristers. It’s difficult to think of a hotspot in criminal law. I suppose trying to find a niche specialisation later on that means that you’re able to deal with a very specific area of quite complex law that nobody else has really specialised in would make you stand out from the crowd but to begin with that’s not something you can really consider so I think that just being able to get into a decent set of chambers or if you chose to go down the CPS route and apply through them to get that security those would be the important things to do because if you get a pupillage tenancy with a set of chambers that doesn’t have a particularly good reputation or doesn’t have a big base of solicitors or areas of the CPS that instruct them then that’s going to reflect on you and it would be very hard to build up a practice without the back up of colleagues who were doing well as well. Really you need to get into the best set of chambers that you can in order to give you the best prospects.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

The CPS has its own website and that gives quite a lot of information on it not only about career opportunities but also about the latest legal developments and those sorts of things. The Bar Council has a website that has a decent amount of information on it. Criminal Law Week is something that barristers often use for legal updates and that would be worth looking at. In terms of pupillage there is a pupillage website and that’s the site that people would use to submit their applications so those are all worth looking at.

What would be your advice to someone considering a career with the CPS?

I think it is a very competitive industry. The pay is not as good as people imagine it might be, it’s not anywhere nearly as well paid as being for example a commercial solicitor or a barrister doing commercial law. But criminal law is fascinating. It’s a very rewarding career, a very interesting career and if you’re motivated enough by your interest in people and other people’s lives really, in presenting cases at court, in having that ability to deal with the cut and thrust of real life disputes, seeing them resolved, if you’re interested in all those sorts of things then it’s a fantastic career.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

A pilot maybe! I love my job but I might be running my own business I think.