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The Times
March 10 1997
Inns of Court scrap medieval dinners rule for Bar students
BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT
THE Bar tradition dating from medieval times whereby student barristers have to "eat dinners" at their Inn of Court to qualify at the Bar is to be scrapped.
Students on the one-year Bar vocational course will no longer have to eat 18 formal dinners in the hall of their Inn during term times, wearing their gowns and complying with various customs and rituals as they have done since the 13th century.
The move, to be introduced in October, constitutes a return to the Inns' traditional role in providing education for student barristers the first formal Inns' teaching, apart from some recent advocacy courses, since 1600. Proposals will go before the Council of the Inns of Court this week from all four Inns Middle and Inner Temple, Gray's and Lincoln's enabling students to choose from various activities at their Inn, including residential weekends, one-day lecture programmes or lecture evenings combined with buffet suppers.
Formal dining in hall will still be on offer, but eating dinners will no longer be required for students to notch up the necessary qualifying units in order to keep terms.
Lord Justice Staughton, a Court of Appeal judge and treasurer of the Inner Temple, said: "It is not so much abolishing a tradition as bringing a great tradition up to date, which needed to be done." Brigadier Peter Little, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, said: "In a sense, we are returning to the original idea of what keeping terms meant and making it an essential part of the education of a barrister."
When students do still dine in hall, the dinners will be combined with activities such as lectures or debates, he added. The traditional idea of the dinners is that students absorb the ethos of the Bar and mingle with their contemporaries and with the benchers of the Inns the QCs and judges who are its governors.
The Inns had been urged to review the system because, from next autumn, several institutions outside London will be providing the Bar vocational course. Students outside London would have had to travel hundreds of miles.
Martin Bowley, QC, a bencher of the Inner Temple who has led the call for reform, welcomed the proposals. He had argued that if students had to travel to the dinners, it would "result in the social base for recruiting Bar students becoming narrower, and it is already too restricted".
The report from the Inns to their governing body, the council, is likely to be approved and then go to the Bar Council. The Bar Council said it supported the changes.
Dining for dining's sake
The cost to students ranges from £7.50 for a three-course meal to £20 for a "grand night". Rituals vary from Inn to Inn. At some, if students fail to toast their colleagues in the right order, or commit some other faux pas, they could be asked to deliver an impromptu speech. Colin Davidson, catering manager of the Middle Temple, said yesterday's menu was: cream of vegetable soup, roast loin of pork and roast potatoes with broccoli followed by blackcurrant cheesecake. The cost, heavily subsidised, was £7.50.Students sit in a group or "mess" of four on long tables. One bottle of wine is provided for each mess. The benchers had a different menu (melon and figs, noisettes of lamb and sorbet baskets) and better quality wines. Recently, however, the Inns have become more aware that eating dinners have become "dining for dining's sake".
