The Barristers

The first episode introduces four bar vocational course students – Catherine, Kakoly, Iqbal and Anna (pictured above) – whose progress will be tracked through the series. None of them fit the white, public schoolboy stereotype. Through them the viewer learns about the traditions of mooting, dining and call night at Middle Temple. They also demonstrate the hurdles faced by aspiring barristers – and the fierce competition in which only one in five will attain his or her dream (and a huge graduate debt). The cameras also follow prosecution junior Richard ‘Dickie’ Bond of Birmingham’s Citadel Chambers through a riot and murder trial. He introduces the viewer to a modern clerks room and the more rarefied atmosphere of the robing room. Future episodes will reveal the work of family and civil barristers as well as more crime work, with unprecedented access to the courts – cameras are on almost until the moment the judge comes in.

Birmingham divorce barrister Louise McCabe brokers a financial settlement while her colleagues in family law investigate a case of a child with a fractured skull. And the hard-up students have their first interviews for pupillage.

Hundreds of years of court tradition that made advocates independent of the state ended when the Crown Prosecution Service began employing its own barristers. It means less work and less money for the self-employed briefs who were used to a monopoly, but many believe it has caused a decline in standards and a risk to justice.

Assault and battery is the first crown court case for newly qualified barrister Kakoly Pande, and there is a judgement in the House of Lords after seven years. But can the Bar face up to its critics who say it is an elitist, out-dated and old fashioned club?