The common law Bar remains an attractive option for those who believe that variety is the spice of life. Typically, common law chambers are multidisciplinary and are divided into practice groups so that members can develop and maintain specialisations. Areas of practice can include actions against the police, employment disputes, discrimination law, landlord and tenant, personal injury, professional negligence, family law and criminal law.

Chris Gutteridge knew at a very early age that he wanted to be a barrister. "Actually, I probably decided too early to really know the difference between being a barrister and a solicitor, but I made up my mind during highschool work experience with the Crown Prosecution Service and put the blinkers on!" he says. "After spending time watching crown court trials and then back in the office, I knew I'd much rather be stood in front of a judge arguing a case than sat behind a desk preparing it." Even at university - when Chris discovered more about the work of solicitors and barristers, and that City firms would pay law school fees - his resolve didn't waver. "Doing something different every day and not being tied to my desk appealed to me enormously. Now that I'm in practice, I love being self-employed; having got used to the independence, I can't see myself working for someone else ever again."

Chris's pupillage was an overwhelmingly positive experience and, looking back, he's grateful he did it at Exchange Chambers. "I think I was lucky to be where I was because I got to experience a bit of everything: crime, personal injury (PI), family and social housing. I had a supervisor who was a criminal law specialist, but because I was a common law pupil I spent time with other barristers and got my teeth into a huge variety of work. I wasn't pushed in any one direction either, which gave me a chance to work out what I was good at and what suited my personality. Now that I specialise in PI - with some social housing work - I realise how beneficial it was to have that grounding in common law across the board. If I'd done a more specialised pupillage, I don't think I'd have learnt, or enjoyed it, nearly as much."

To make the most of your pupillage, Chris advises approaching it with an open mind: "If you go along for the ride and don't have too much of an expectation of what it's going to be like, you will more than likely enjoy it. Come prepared to put in the work and you'll get a lot out of it."

Now a barrister of five years' call, Chris finds that his typical day is split equally between court and papers. Paperwork involves everything from advising on liability and quantum to drafting pleadings for court and schedules of loss; while court work involves all kinds of applications, as well as final hearings. Chris explains: "The key to doing well is getting the balance right so that you can prepare sufficiently for your court work and keep on top of your papers. That gets easier as you progress through your career - not because the work gets easier, but because you develop more skills, gain more experience and learn ways of dealing with the tasks you face."

There's no denying that the job is hard, but Chris is quick to stress that it's also lots of fun. "I find putting my legal knowledge into practice really enjoyable: getting up in court, making my submissions, arguing my case. And there's a great social side to the Bar - I made friends early on during pupillage and I'm still very close to them now." The work can also be incredibly rewarding. "One particular case I worked on as a junior involved a soldier who had sustained a serious injury in Afghanistan when the vehicle he was travelling in flipped over. He was only a few years older than me, but had been left in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. We got him an excellent settlement - which felt great, because having met him and his family, I knew the difference that money was going to make to his life. It sounds trite, but one of my motivations for coming to this area of practice was to help people, so getting a result like that makes the hard work feel worthwhile."

If you want to do claimant work, empathy is fundamental, as Chris points out. "You have to remember that although you're looking at words and figures on a page, there is a person involved who has sustained an injury." You also need tenacity: "You have to be very determined to get a good result for your client - to put your case together and argue it fiercely!"

Looking to the future, Chris identifies funding changes as one of the biggest issues facing the common law Bar and lawyers who do publicly funded work. "There's about to be a significant change in funding for PI and civil cases," he explains. "The CFA system [no win, no fee] that presently underpins the funding of PI litigation is about to be altered pretty significantly as a result of the Jackson Review. There is likely to be a reduction in legal fees overall because success fees are being capped. Contingency fees are also being introduced, which means that claimants will have to pay some of the legal costs of their case out of their damages. These changes are going to have a major effect on my practice and on most claimant PI practices." Legal aid funding issues in criminal and family law will also have a major impact on the criminal and family Bar.

Despite the changing legal landscape and the challenges ahead, Chris doesn't hesitate to recommend the Bar to others. "I don't want to put people off the profession in any way because it is a fantastic job! If you want to do it, be aware of what's on the horizon, but don't let it stop you - once you get into practice, it's so worthwhile. It's a great job and one that can be very rewarding."