Prestigious scholarship aids journey to the Bar

Prestigious scholarship aids journey to the Bar

Sam Goodman (2002-2009) has been awarded the Queen Mother Scholarship – the most prestigious award offered by the Middle Temple for students planning to qualify as a barrister.

Sam impressed the Scholarship panel at the Middle Temple – one of the four Inns of Court with the exclusive right to Call students to the Bar – as one of the most impressive all-round candidates. He was judged against the panel’s four criteria: intellectual ability; motivation to succeed at the Bar; potential as an advocate, and personal qualities.

He has also won an Excellence Award from the BPP University in London, where he will be beginning the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) in September this year. Both awards provide financial support during the BPTC.

At QE, Sam gained eight A* grades and two As at GCSE, followed by straight As at A-Level. He was a School Lieutenant and Managing Director of a Young Enterprise business and was also involved in public speaking.

He won a place at Queen’s College, Cambridge, where he took a First in Law. He was editor in chief from 2009-2012 of Per Incuriam, the university’s student legal publication.

After Cambridge, Sam worked as a Legal Analyst in an American boutique litigation firm called Kobre & Kim LLP.

“I subsequently applied for and gained a place at Mansfield College, Oxford, to study the BCL, which is Oxford’s name for their Master’s programme in Law,” says Sam. He has been studying restitution, private international law, international dispute settlement and the law of the World Trade Organisation.

“I should mention that at Oxford, I am joined by my younger brother Alexander Goodman, another OE [2005 – 2012], who is an undergraduate studying Geography.”

Sam will be looking to commence pupillage at a barristers’ chambers in September 2015, specialising in international law and international commercial litigation.