As a charity, the ICLR is keen to support legal education and training in a number of ways.
For many years the ICLR has either run or sponsored mooting competitions. We now make an annual Pupillage Award; we sponsor the BVL annual Model Law Commission report; and, thanks to the generosity of our former reporter, the late Miss Busfield, we also offer an annual essay prize.
Details of these schemes can be found by navigating to the relevant sections below.
Mooting
The ICLR can provide financial support or donate prizes for student mooting competitions.
We also offer participating students free access to ICLR.4 and Case Genie for the duration of the competition. For more information, see this blog post: Students: how Case Genie can help you win your moot
Please apply to Enquiries@iclr.co.uk
Recent winners
Brighton Law School, University of Brighton (2021)
- Lauren Andrews
- Honey Croxson
- Glen White
- Ella Smith
Pupillage Award
In recognition of the difficulties faced by many talented individuals during pupillage, the ICLR currently awards an annual bursary worth £13,000 in direct financial assistance to a pupil during the course of their 12-month pupillage in Chambers. The award was founded to mark ICLR’s 150th anniversary in 2015 and the first award was made the following year.
“I am so grateful for the stability that winning the ICLR Award offers, having left the relative security of a third-sector career for pupillage at the self-employed Bar. After years of working and studying towards this goal, it gives me the freedom to pursue a practice in publicly funded areas of law. The Award has also given me a confidence boost ahead of my second Six and encouraged me that I am capable of the challenge to come. The Award will allow me to focus on this challenge and take up any opportunities that arise, without the added pressure of financial concerns.”
– Helen Peden, winner of the ICLR Pupillage Award 2023
“I cannot thank the ICLR enough for all their help during my year of pupillage… Winning the award meant far more to me than just receiving its considerable financial support – it gave me the confidence to really embrace my change of profession and make the most of all the opportunities that pupillage offered me.”
– Tamasin Graham, winner of the ICLR Pupillage Award 2019
Previous Awards
2023: Helen Peden (Garden Court North)
2022: Lily Belfer (187 Chambers)
2021: Matt Ward (187 Fleet Street)
2020: No competition took place due to COVID-19
2019: Tamasin Graham (Lamb Building)
2018: Daniel Wand (4 King’s Bench Walk)
2017: Ben Haseldine (4 King’s Bench Walk)
2016: Sophia Stapleton (2 Dr Johnson’s Building)
The Application Process
The ICLR Pupillage Award involves three key steps before selecting a winning candidate.
Initial application round
- The first step in the application process asks for information about your finances and why you feel you need financial assistance to support you during pupillage.
- We believe that by virtue of having secured pupillage, all candidates will have passed a rigorous interview process and have an excellent academic background. Accordingly, we will not ask you to provide us with a CV.
- We will ask you to supply two short pieces of writing to demonstrate your intellectual merit.
- We will ask you for the details of a referee. We may contact your referee if we require more information about you.
Shortlisting and headnote drafting exercise.
- We will draw up a shortlist of six candidates who will be asked to write a headnote based on an unreported judgment that we will supply. We expect all candidates to have a solid understanding of the content and structure of a law report.
Selecting the winner
- The final selection of the winning candidate will be made by the judging panel: Margaret Bowron KC, Mr Justice Roth and Brendan Wright (ICLR)
- The final decision will be based on a combined evaluation of the headnote and the short-written pieces supplied in the initial application round.
- The winning candidate will be notified in September 2024
BVL Model Law Commission
The ICLR is proud to support BVL, a social mobility charity operating across England and Wales which seeks to engage A-level students from non-traditional backgrounds with law and legal policy, to help foster and encourage their interest in legal studies and careers.
Each year, four groups of students partake in a three-month project to investigate and recommend law reform in one of four areas: (1) Family, Trusts or Land Law; (2) Criminal Law; (3) Commercial and Common Law; (4) Public Law. The students are all from different schools and collaborate on the projects via online meetings. They are guided and supervised by volunteers from legal firms and chambers. At the end of the project, they deliver a report which ICLR is now proud to publish on behalf of BVL.
The Model Law Commission Report 2023 was launched on 23 January 2024, at an event hosted by Alex Cunningham MP at Portcullis House, Westminster, and BVL’s CEO, Victoria Anderson, with presentations from each of the project teams.
The Busfield Essay Prize
This is an annual prize for an essay, awarded to a student at the City Law School.
Past Winners
- 2022 – Charlie Wall
- 2021 – Mark Blundell
- 2020 – Beth Hibbert
- 2019 – William Bordell
- 2018 – Daniel Judd
- 2017 – Sophie Clayton
- 2016 – Matthew Rees
- 2015 – Dr George Molyneaux
- 2014 – David Gregory
- 2013 – Ryan Lim
- 2012 – David Peter
- 2010 – Emma Fenn
- 2009 – Zizhen Yang
- 2008 – Charlotte Cooke
- 2007 – Darshini Manraj
A brief biography of Miss K. Busfield
Kathleen Nancy Busfield was born in 1909. She was the daughter of a commercial traveller who died while she was still a child. She and her brother were sent to the Commercial Travellers’ School in Hatch End. After she left school she qualified as a chartered secretary, and she worked as a company secretary until about 1960, when she decided to read for the Bar. She was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1963 and admitted ad eundem by Lincoln’s Inn in 1965, where she was in chambers at 5 New Square.
She began reporting for the ICLR in 1965 and was appointed to the Chancery Division in 1966. She continued to report in the Chancery courts until her retirement (or, as she put it, her “change of status”) in 1996 at the age of 87.
She was fiercely independent and a very private person, although she had many interests outside the law, prominent among which was her interest in her Huguenot ancestry and her membership of the Huguenot Society, of which she was a committee member for many years. She was held in great affection by her colleagues at the ICLR, and maintained her contact with them until her death in 2006 at the age of 97.
The photograph used on this page has been taken from a genealogical website about Miss Busfield’s family history.
