Christopher Knowles attended the event and gave a talk on a  career at the Bar and the life of a Pupil Barrister. He was one of three speakers at the event - the other two being representatives from the Government Legal Service and the College of Law.

His talk covered the numerous routes to a career as a Barrister, and what chambers would be looking for in prospective pupils and how to apply for pupillage.During the course of the talk, Christopher touched upon the Inns of Court, the Bar Professional Training Course and CV and application form tips.

Following the talk, Christopher remained behind to answer questions from students and participated in an exercise with the College of Law, which covered aspects of the core modules which would be studied on the graduate diploma in law course, namely contract, criminal, tort, land, constitutional, equity and trusts, and european law.

 Public access, direct access is becoming an increasingly large proportion of work that is done by the bar. However, not all barristers can work directly with lay clients. When dealing with a litigant in person there is often special care that is required and therefore more senior barristers tend to do public access or direct access and they are required to undertake a special course prior to undertaking work for lay clients.

From it's inception, direct access, public access has worked well which has led to an extension of the areas of work that barristers can do under this scheme. In particular family work has seen a marked increase in access to the bar. Also, criminal work has proved a popular area for lay clients in certain offences. These include speeding offences, drink driving, traffic light offences, RSPCA cases and other matters of this nature. Another growth area has been licensing of pubs, clubs and restaurants as well as other social venues.