Portal Prattle

As a Portal virgin, I went along to a talk at Gray's Inn on Tuesday all about the Pupillage Portal. It was mainly a step by step instruction guide into how to write your name, address and all other personal details with almost nothing about how to handle the important stuff like how to approach the key Pupillage questions, which apparently (according to the organiser) we should have all perfected by now.... (Queue a hell of a lot of nervous shuffling in seats and even more Poker face contortions from those that didn't want to give away signs of their panic.)

There were a few good tips though, and here are the ones that I can remember:

• Once you have registered you can change your choice for your first chambers as many times as you like, meaning that before even typing a word you should be able to check out if any of your chosen 12 have included a unique question, just by changing the provider and then looking at the Pupillage questions. If it is there, it will be flagged as well, so there is no missing it.
• You can up-date the Awards section after close of play at the end of April. So if you are lucky enough to get awarded a Scholarship from your Inn or any other award for that matter, you can update that section to let chambers know. You cannot update any other section though.
• There is nothing stopping you from contacting chambers directly however. So, if for example you get a new job or do some more Pro-bono or whatever, you can always contact chambers to let them know. Obviously, it is probably worth considering how important that new piece of information is when deciding whether to let them know. Contacting them over something trivial might not count in your favour.
• The Cover Letter is optional, and should be treated as such. Chambers differ in their views about this section, and it might be worth contacting individual chambers in advance to find out whether they will be looking for a lot from this section or whether they view it negatively and would prefer it either to be very brief or even ignored entirely.

Another piece of personal advice that I gained from the whole experience is never trust your shoes not to fall apart on a rainy day in London. You end up with very wet feet.