Housing/landlord and tenant law embraces all aspects of residential and commercial tenancies and covers issues as diverse as anti-social behaviour, disrepair and dilapidation, human rights, possession claims, succession and assignment. Clients might include local authorities, housing associations, private landlords and, of course, tenants.

Paul Burns is a man whose star is most certainly in the ascendant. A tenant of Exchange Chambers in Liverpool and Manchester, he was recently named Barrister of the Year 2009 by the Liverpool Law Society and listed by The Times as one of the top 10 UK Future Stars of the Bar - the only barrister in the northwest of England to be included. Paul studied law at the University of Liverpool before attending the Inns of Court School of Law (now The City Law School), where he did his Bar finals. His pupillage was at Exchange Chambers and he recalls that, as for many others, the transition from law school was quite a culture shock. "Pupillage is entirely different," he says. "You can only learn so much in a classroom - the video monitoring and role-play exercises are of some benefit, but it's never going to be the same as working in chambers and seeing the reality for yourself. Pupillage is a challenging time, but you learn a huge amount in the first non-practising six months. After six months you reach the point where you've got to start doing the job for yourself, and in your second six-month period your progress is monitored and supervised. Pupillage will leave you in no doubt as to what the job really involves."

Paul initially joined chambers with a view to focusing on criminal and family law: "But when I actually started to practise, I found that I didn't particularly enjoy family law. Fortunately for me, in my first 12 months I began to develop a fairly busy civil court practice. The downside of this was that I couldn't really get involved in longer criminal cases because clients wanted me to go to court in my own civil cases. In the circumstances, a focus on civil practice inevitably followed. It was quite by chance that I started to practise in the area of housing law, which was initially new to me. In fact, my first instructions in housing law came from a local authority which was faced with claims relating to the alleged state of disrepair of several of its properties. I was briefed to defend initially one or two cases, and then ultimately several hundred. The local authority in question gained a national reputation for its success in defending these claims and in consequence other areas of housing law opened up for me in my early years of practice. I quickly began to specialise in work for local government, government departments and housing associations."

While some might assume housing and landlord and tenant law to be a narrow, perhaps staid area of practice, Paul explains that this could not be further from the truth. "Of course, we do a lot of work with local authorities and housing associations in relation to pure landlord and tenant points and human rights - the more technical areas of practice. But my own practice also encompasses areas such as anti-social behaviour and possession claims, as well as judicial review and human rights litigation. I regularly deal with gang anti-social behaviour litigation, evictions of individuals and families that are behaving anti-socially, and possession and injunction proceedings arising out of criminal conduct such as violence and drug dealing. I am currently briefed in range of cases, including appeal proceedings arising out of a £7 million Class A drugs importation case and civil proceedings linked to the gangrelated murder of an innocent schoolchild. So it's quite a varied practice."

Paul's practice is also quite heavily courtroom based. "I would say that probably three to four days out of five, I'm in court," he says. "That said, there is also preparation time as well as paperwork and conferences. The paperwork side tends to be skeleton arguments. Because a lot of my cases are quite dynamic, with facts sometimes changing from week to week, it's often more useful to have a conference rather than provide written advice. That way we can sit down as a team - the solicitors, myself and, in appropriate cases, the professional clients and/or enforcement officers - and discuss the case in detail. Conferences generally allow the legal, factual and tactical issues requiring consideration to be fully ventilated, which in turn enables me to advise and explain the reasoning behind my advice to the team."

The skills needed to build a career in housing and local government law aren't really different from those required elsewhere at the Bar, but Paul suggests that the human touch and a good dose of common sense will stand you in particularly good stead: "Of course, you need the technical knowledge and attention to detail to consider and advise on the legal issues, which can be very complex in themselves. But in many cases you need additional skills to succeed in this area. You must be able to handle difficult or vulnerable witnesses, and to empathise and assist with the pressures which clients face before and during the litigation. You need the ability to assimilate large quantities of documents and detail, and then to apply the law and construct submissions on the law and facts - sometimes at very short notice. You need to be flexible and a skilled tactician. In short, you must be able to understand and assist with the whole process of litigation. A successful barrister must display a range of skills beyond knowledge of the law and procedure - often under pressure."

Paul also advises that barristers in this field should be forward thinking. "This is an area where the interface between domestic legislation and human rights is regularly challenged and visited by the higher courts, so decisions are frequently vulnerable to appeal. Accordingly, you have always got to have one eye on the potential for appeals when you are considering with a client whether to run a case and, if so, how to run it."

As a final note to those who may be applying for pupillage, Paul warns against throwing away years of hard work for the sake of a few hours' careful preparation and concentration. "All candidates for pupillage need to spend plenty of time ensuring that their CV, application form and covering letter are completed to a very high standard. We often see basic spelling and other mistakes, and ill-thought-out responses. For reasons that escape me, year after year a handful of candidates do not seem prepared to invest quality time in preparing their applications. Chambers are busy places and competition is fierce - they often receive a couple of hundred applications for perhaps only one or two pupillages. So you have to make sure that your application is carefully prepared and sells you in the best possible light. I know that it's not rocket science, but you really would be amazed at what we sometimes see … "