From first module to Call
Five stages separate an admission form in Dhaka from a Call to the Bar in London. Each opening below sets out where you are, how long that stage runs, and who has to act at every step.
Getting on
Deciding which of London's routes you are eligible for, and getting registered before the window shuts.
- Duration
- 2 to 4 months
- Where
- Lalmatia, Dhaka
Your certificates are read against London's rule
Same dayStandard Entry, Graduate Entry or the CertHE first — the answer is in your transcripts, not in what you hoped for. We would rather tell you on day one than take a fee and let London tell you in month three.
We fileThe application goes to London
Passport, certificates, transcripts and evidence of English, in the formats London's portal will accept — checked here before they are uploaded, not after they are rejected.
We fileRegistration closes in November
1 NovemberThis date is the hinge of the whole route. Register by November and you sit in May; miss it and the next sitting is October, and every date after it moves with you.
London
The degree
Twelve modules, or nine on the graduate route, examined by London in May and October — and one choice inside them that decides whether the Bar will accept the degree at all.
- Duration
- 3 to 6 years
- Where
- Taught here, examined in Dhaka
Taught classes, marked against the examiners' reports
London publishes what its examiners thought of last year's scripts. Most distance students never read them. Every piece of written work here is marked against them, and comes back with the reasoning on it.
We fileThe three optional modules that are not optional
7 foundationsProperty law, EU law and Equity and Trusts are optional in London's regulations and compulsory on the Bar's list of the seven foundations. Choose around them and you can pass a perfectly valid LLB that will not get you onto a Bar training course.
We fileExaminations, in Dhaka
May · OctoberTyped examinations at a local centre, on London's paper, marked in London. Entry for the sitting is a separate act with its own deadline and its own fee, and the centre charges its own fee on top.
YouThe LLB (Honours) is awarded
By the University of London. It satisfies the academic component of Bar training — and London's own advice is to confirm in writing with the regulator of wherever you intend to practise that the degree is recognised there.
London
The Inn
Four Inns of Court in London. You join one before the vocational stage begins, and it is the Inn — not the regulator, not a university — that Calls you to the Bar.
- Duration
- Alongside the vocational year
- Where
- London
Join one of the four
Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Gray's Inn. Membership has to be in place before the vocational component starts, not during it.
The InnTen qualifying sessions
Within 5 yearsDinners, lectures, advocacy days and residential weekends at your Inn. All ten must fall inside the five years ending on the day you are Called — sessions older than that expire, which is why they are started early and not left to the last term.
You
Vocational, and Call
The training that turns a law graduate into an advocate, at a body the Bar Standards Board authorises — and then the ceremony that makes you a barrister but not yet a practising one.
- Duration
- About 1 year
- Where
- London
The vocational component
£12k – £20kThe BPTC no longer exists. What replaced it is a Bar training course run by an organisation the Bar Standards Board authorises, and providers name theirs differently — so read what a course is authorised to deliver, not what it is called. The aptitude test that used to gate entry was abolished in 2022.
YouCall to the Bar
Your Inn Calls you once the vocational component and the ten sessions are done. You are a barrister from that day. You may not yet practise, and anyone who tells a Dhaka family otherwise is selling something.
The Inn
Permission to practise
Call is a qualification, not a licence. Both countries make you earn the licence separately, and they do it differently.
- Duration
- 1 to 2 years
- Where
- London or Dhaka
England and Wales: pupillage
6 + 6 monthsTwelve months in chambers — six non-practising, then six practising on a provisional certificate, with the professional ethics assessment sat during it. Pupillage is competitive and no academy anywhere can promise you one.
YouBangladesh: the Bar Council still examines you
MCQ · written · vivaBeing a Barrister is a way of qualifying under the 1972 Order — it is not an exemption from it. The Order's conditions run together: citizenship, age, a recognised degree or Bar-at-Law, and the examination the Bar Council prescribes. Enrolment as an Advocate is what admits you to court, and it comes after that examination, not instead of it.
You
Call admits you to the Bar of England and Wales as a qualified barrister. Practice there still requires pupillage; practice here requires enrolment with the Bangladesh Bar Council, whose own examination — MCQ, written and viva — is sat in Dhaka. Both are planned from the day you register, not after the gown is on.