By Jessica Sutcliffe, St Catherine's

My time at Keating Chambers was very useful. This was because it highlighted to me the very important fact that I do NOT want to make law my career.

The stress which I have seen barristers and their staff perform under is staggering.

Most of them don't subject themselves to the customary nine to five hours, but instead start very early in the morning and don't finish until well into the evening. "A clerk works on average 50-60 hours a week" - Chris Sunderland.

As you can see, they are very busy people and I was told throughout my two weeks at Keating Chambers how useful I was and how much they appreciated my help.

Just doing odd jobs like doing their filing, photocopying case files or delivering faxes or boxes to various barristers really freed up their time and allowed them to get on with more important jobs.

A colleague of mine pointed out another fact as to why their firm takes on work experience pupils. They said "to see the quality of students".

I must be honest; I did not understand him at first. I mean, my school turns out very good students, but then I realised why the law firm would need to see for themselves the quality of students. This was because their only source of information is the media. The media is hardly going to go about saying how wonderful and mature the majority of students are, are they? That won't sell papers!

So all the companies ever really hear is how little we are taught, how rude we have become, how dangerous we are etc. This picture doesn't fairly represent the entire pupil population but still gives us all a bad image.

It is not just companies that share this opinion - many people do! If you walked down a road on your own and a group of teenagers are walking towards you, do you cross to the other side? If you don't you are part of a minority! You have realised that we are not all crazy, shop-lifting, vandalising lunatics with the IQ of a lemming! In fact hardly any of us are!

What we need are more open-minded companies like Keating Chambers, willing to give us students a chance to learn and progress. If you own a company and are able to offer a workplacement for a student, please do so. We can only help you.