The real cost of getting to the Bar: is it worth it?

Everyone knows that the way to the independent Bar is paved with gold; your own gold.

With prices increasing every year, prospective BPTC candidates should be well aware of how much they'll have to save, beg from their parents or borrow from their bank manager to secure their spot on the course.

For me, just starting the BPTC in September, the figures are starting to scare me. There are so many hidden costs and the hole in my pocket seems so large that there's now less trouser than hole. Soon I'll be left in nothing but my underwear, throwing money at the floor.

The figures below are designed to demonstrate how much you'll really be spending to get to the Bar.

What a law graduate has spent so far

Broadly speaking, here's what you can expect to pay at the outset:

• University fees, plus maintenance loan: £21,000 (some of this year's cohort will double that figure).
• BCAT exam fee: £150.
• Inns of Court membership: £100.
• BPTC application: £75.
• BPTC deposit: £500.

These are amounts that every law graduate will have to find before they have even thought about their first day on the BPTC. (Plus goodness knows how much spent on suits and schmoozing.) Considering that a student's source of income is, more often than not, a part-time job or a summer placement, coming up with £825 is no mean feat.

Non-law graduates will be looking at the GDL conversion course, which will cost them a pretty £9,820.

Cost of the BPTC

The amounts below are based on London prices - regionally, you will of course be spending slightly less:

• BPTC fees: £17,895.
• London rent: £600-£800 per month.
• London travel: £150 per month.
• Living expenses: £5 a pint. Ouch.  (Obviously there is more to living than drinking, but when you consider that a pint in my rural local costs £2.40, it's a perfect example of how expensive inner-city living can be.)

At this point, my friends always say to me, "So what? You followed your dream! You'll be earning big bucks soon." Won't I?

Just taking into account educational fees, I will have spent nearly £40,000 of someone else's money, to get to pupillage stage. Before I pay  it back, I'd like to be on a wage that would allow me to oblige.

The minimum possible earnings for pupillage year are if you work in crime or human rights, where pupils earn £12,000. The maximum possible earnings for pupillage year are in commercial law, at £60,000-£80,000.

Criminal and commercial law are not everyone's first choices, but they demonstrate the financial imbalance in the legal sector. If it's commercial law you're interested in, then the decision to fork out the amount you did was potentially a good investment, as long as you're a great advocate (competition is incredibly fierce).

I, on the other hand, would love to be a criminal barrister (and let's presume that the future of the criminal Bar is stable enough for me to embark on that route). Earning just £12,000, I could not afford to live in London, let alone begin to pay off any loan.

As an unqualified paralegal I could be earning up to a third more than I would be if I secured criminal pupillage as a nearly qualified barrister. As the private institutions like BPP raise their course costs, the publicly funded pupillage awards get withdrawn or slashed and the gap increases.

It begs the question that, with little chance of gaining pupillage and a poor pay packet, why would anyone still strive to become a criminal barrister?

It's for the same reasons as always; if you want it enough, you'll make the decision to pursue it. For instance, if you dream of going to Oxbridge, you apply. Even though everyone insists on telling you it's hard, "practically impossible", and that you should be prepared for the worst; you'll still do it because you want it so badly. Sometimes you'll make it. Sometimes you won't, but you'll fall down the ladder until you find somewhere else you belong. It's more of a tragedy not to try, than it is not to succeed. It just depends how much you're willing to give in the first place.

I think there are many reasons specific to the criminal Bar, too. From perhaps a rather naïve aspiration to make the criminal justice system work and the world a better place, to the more begrudging acceptance that someone still has to do the job.

I know I belong in the former mind set and am chasing a dream that I've had from a very young age. That is not to say that I have not been tempted to take other paths; I spent a few months working as a paralegal in a solicitors' firm before realising the solicitor route was just not for me. It's been tough so far and it is depressing to think that I may never make it to my dream simply because I won't be able to afford it, but I still have to try. For many, the cost will prove simply too great.

In some ways things could be worse. If I apply for pupillages and don't get them, I'll have to start thinking of alternatives. Some of those alternatives will pay enough for me to start paying off my loan, so there is most definitely a silver lining in failure!

This is what I will always be passionate about and I will find a way to be involved in it professionally. Passion should be treasured and utilised, and with increasing legal aid cuts, it might just be the saviour for some of us.

Emily Lanham  is a law graduate currently working as a paralegal in a London Chambers, as well as independently with driving offence solicitors based in Manchester (www.drivingoffence.com). She embarks on the BPTC part-time in September 2014.