Joining Pump Court Chambers means joining a community of exceptional barristers, clerks and staff. We work hard to deliver the highest-quality legal services, of course, but we do so in a culture of collaboration, mutual respect and shared endeavour.
We’re proud of our reputation for quality – we have earned it – but at the same time we try not to take ourselves too seriously. This is a great place for giant talents but it is no place for giant egos or divas. Instead, we value relentless curiosity, progressive thinking and a healthy measure of humility. We want people who are ambitious to push themselves, but who are also comfortable to ask colleagues for their input to better serve a client.
We are also a diverse set – a group of talented individuals who have arrived here from different places and backgrounds and with different experiences and perspectives. We feel this makes Pump Court stronger as a group, better able to serve our clients and, critically, a more interesting and stimulating place to develop a legal career.
If this sounds like an environment and culture in which you could thrive we would like to hear from you.
We are an equal opportunities employer – for more information visit Equality & Diversity. Applications are overseen by our Pupillage and Tenancy Committee.
A word from our head of chambers:
‘The party line, as you might expect, is that we want to be recognised as one of the premier common law sets in the UK – and we do and we are. Quality and expertise are very important to us here.
But really, high standards are merely the threshold of entry for a set operating at our level. If you aren’t pursuing and delivering high-quality then you’re in the wrong game.
Beyond that, we want to be recognised as a set with an independent spirit and a conscience. There’s humility and humanity here – I like to think of it as ‘soul’ – and I think that makes us a little bit different.
There’s great longevity within our ranks and we’ve produced a disproportionate number of judges, which I think says something about us. People stay here because they like the work we attract, and they like coming to work because of the people we attract – a really lively, interesting and funny group of people.
In relaunching our website, we spoke to number of members of chambers about what they thought defined Pump Court and the words and phrases that kept recurring were less about what we do and much more about the way that we do it: ‘unstuffy’, ‘approachable’, ‘efficient’, collaborative’, ‘practical’, ‘progressive’ and ‘diverse’.
I’m very happy and very proud to be part of, and to lead, a set of exceptional people who use these words to describe themselves. And for the record, when I was asked how I would define Pump Court, I said, ‘Straight stories, told well’.”
