Planning/environment
Three-way split Pupillage at FTB is split between three supervisors, with pupils spending four months with each and the level of responsibility increasing as experience is gained. “Certainly for the first four months I was pretty much just following my supervisor,” recalls Alexander, “accompanying them to inquiries, court, conferences or on site visits. I would also do written work for them in chambers, whether researching points of law or doing first drafts of opinions and skeleton arguments. After the first four months, you are encouraged to start doing more of that sort of work for other members of chambers, which helps to broaden your experience. Moving into the second six, halfway through your second supervisor, you are then encouraged take on some work of your own while continuing to do work for other members of chambers.” While much of the work Alexander found himself doing in his own right during this time bore little resemblance to his planning caseload today, it gave him the chance to build confidence dealing with matters on his own and to familiarise himself with the workings of the court. He was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to act as a junior for another member of chambers on a week-long village green inquiry. “I’m not sure howmany cases I did, but it gives you experience; and although you have the assistance of your supervisors, who are there for guidance if you need it, at the end of the day you are the one on your feet, arguing in court. The nature of the job is such that there isn’t a lot of pure planning work at pupil level, although I did do some, so a lot of what I was doing was small county court work, which dropped off once I got tenancy.”
Planning law regulates theway inwhich property owners use and develop their property in the interests of thewider community. Local planning authorities are required to followa legal and policy framework in their decisionmaking. Planning law is often interwovenwith other branches of the law, such as environmental, local government and judicial review. Clientsmight include landowners, developers, local authorities, public and private utilities, government departments, amenity groups and individuals. In 2012, the year Alexander Greaves was called to the Bar, Rolling Stone magazine updated its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Nestled at number 258 was the 1968 offering The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society – the London band’s sixth studio album and one of their most acclaimed works. The album not only cemented a place in music history that year, but also inadvertently held a clue to Alexander’s path towards the Planning Bar. “It was not entirely accidental that I ended up in planning lawor that I didmy pupillage at Francis Taylor Building (FTB),” recallsAlexander. “During my lawconversion course, I decided I wanted to go into public lawand looked at various different areas. It was then I developed an interest in village green law– a slightly esoteric discipline related to planning law. It waswhile researching it further that I came across FTB, as they’ve done quite a lot of work in the area.” He obtained pupillage at FTB and, due to the fact that few planning lawmodules are taught, found that the work he was doing was unlike anything he had experienced during his postgraduate legal education. While he points out that no prior knowledge of the subject is expected of young barristers, the learning curve during his first fewmonths of pupillage was pretty steep, as he had to get to grips with much of the law from scratch.
For more chambers that work in this practice area, please use the ‘Pupillage index’.
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