Government to match funding for 100 criminal legal aid pupillages

The Ministry of Justice has opened a new funding stream to help criminal law chambers bring more pupils through the door, promising £1.5m each year to match-fund up to 100 additional criminal legal aid pupillages annually.

The scheme narrows the existing match-funding programme run by the Council of the Inns of Court (COIC). While COIC covers chambers and other approved training organisations that do predominantly legally aided work, the MoJ money is reserved for sets whose main focus is criminal legal aid.

That narrower scope matters because criminal practice has long struggled to attract junior barristers in the numbers the system needs. The new money is designed to tip the economics so that a chambers that would only have funded one pupil can instead afford two.

What the new MoJ funding covers

The pledge is worth £1.5m per year and is expected to support up to 100 extra pupillages in criminal legal aid work each year. It sits alongside the COIC match-funding scheme, which has been running since 2014 and will administer the MoJ pot.

Crucially, the matched-funded pupillages must be on top of those the chambers would have offered anyway. The idea is not to replace existing pupillage funding, but to expand the total number of junior tenants entering criminal practice.

Chambers that receive the money will also be expected to bake equal opportunity measures into their recruitment, including targeted outreach and concrete steps to improve representation within the profession.

How the match-funding scheme works

COIC will run the MoJ scheme on the same model it already uses for its own match-funding programme. For the first six months of a 2027-2028 pupillage, COIC and the MoJ will match the funding provided by chambers up to £12,400 for London pupillages and £11,350 for those outside the capital.

Those figures rise in 2028-29 to £13,500 for London and £12,350 elsewhere. The chambers remain responsible for making sure the overall pupillage award meets the Bar Standards Board minimum for the relevant year.

In 2026, that minimum award is £25,863 for a 12-month pupillage in London and £23,504 outside London. The match funding therefore covers a meaningful slice of the first six months, but chambers still have to find the rest and fund the second six months themselves.

Why it matters for the criminal Bar

Criminal legal aid has been bleeding junior talent for years. The financial risk of a 12-month pupillage, followed by the uncertain income of a young criminal practitioner, deters able candidates who cannot afford to spend a year on low pay while living in expensive cities.

By lowering the cost to chambers, the hope is that more sets will take on pupils, and that pupils from less affluent backgrounds will be able to afford to enter criminal practice. The narrower focus on criminal legal aid chambers also recognises that the problem is particularly acute in that part of the profession.

The COIC scheme has already grown. When it started in 2014 it supported 14 pupillages; by 2023 that had risen to 33. The MoJ top-up should accelerate that trend if the money is fully taken up.

What the profession says

Sarah Sackman, the justice minister, said the initiative would help train the next generation of criminal barristers who are essential to upholding the rule of law and delivering swifter justice for victims. She added that she wanted the Bar open to the brightest people from every background.

In a joint statement, Riel Karmy-Jones KC and Andrew Thomas KC, chair and chair-elect of the Criminal Bar Association, said the funding was a very positive step forward. They argued the criminal justice system needs a vibrant, diverse and independent criminal Bar to strengthen public cohesion, and that the money would support efforts to recruit from the widest possible pool of candidates.

Kirsty Brimelow KC, chair of the Bar Council, said the implementation of the initiative was the result of joint working between the Ministry of Justice, the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association and the Inns of Court. She noted it had been championed by the Bar Council since 2024, when it featured in the Bar Council’s “Manifesto for justice”.

Our view

A hundred extra pupillages is a modest number set against the scale of the criminal justice system, but it is a sensible intervention. The real test will be whether the extra places convert into longer careers at the criminal Bar, rather than simply becoming a temporary subsidy before graduates move to more lucrative areas of law.

Chambers should also be asked to show that the equal opportunity measures produce results, not just paperwork. Match funding is welcome; the harder task is changing the economics of the first few years of practice so that the pupils it supports can actually afford to stay.