LSB to quiz all lawyers on parents’ education
Legal Services Board to get tough on social mobility in profession
Lawyers will be asked to reveal whether their parents attended university under far-reaching proposals by the Legal Services Board (LSB) to monitor social mobility across the profession.
The plans are part of a concerted effort by the LSB to monitor social mobility ahead of the April Equality Act implementation.
The LSB consultation document, ’Increasing Diversity and Social Mobility in the Legal Workforce: Transparency and Evidence’, will form the basis for the largest survey of the profession’s diversity credentials.
It states: “We consider that transparency and greater clarity about the existing make-up of the profession will encourage more firms and chambers to take action to deliver diversity.”
Lawyers will be quizzed on a range of topics, including socio-economic background, religion, disability and caring responsibilities.
While the LSB conceded that there is no “silver bullet” solution to encouraging greater diversity in the law, lawyers welcomed the move.
Baker & McKenzie partner Tom Cassels said: “It’s absolutely necessary. The first stage of dealing with these issues is to understand the current position. It’s not about social engineering.
“You need to ask the questions to make sure you don’t inadvertently block access to the profession.”
“It can only help what we’ve been doing as a profession,” stated Weightmans partner Elaine Chapman. “We’ve moved on so much in the past five years. It’s a really good thing and can only help enhance the skill sets of legal organisations.”
The regulator is also consulting on how best to monitor social diversity in alternative business structures (ABSs) following the implementation of the Legal Services Act in October.
“Our expectation is that licensing authorities will impose requirements for transparency about diversity data from day one,” the LSB stated. “The requirement will need to extend to the part of the relevant organisation that’s licensed as an ABS. This is particularly important, because success in removing barriers to progression cannot necessarily be measured only by looking at whether the diversity make-up of traditional firms or chambers changes to reflect the wider population.”
The LSB has commissioned a team of academics to produce a qualitative survey of the sector and its approach to encouraging greater diversity.
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Readers' comments (32)
Anonymous | 14-Feb-2011 9:52 am
Maybe the better question for lawyers when looking at social mobility shouldn't be about where their parents attended university but whether or not their parents attended university.
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Middle class and proud of it | 14-Feb-2011 11:02 am
Why should where your parents go to university have any bearing on how good you are as a lawyer? This is a ridiculous waste of time and effort by the LSB. Parental university choice is only one factor in a child's education. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
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Middle class and indifferent to it, actually | 14-Feb-2011 11:47 am
@middleclassandproudof it
I think you've missed the point of this initiative. As I understand it, this is a monitoring exercise rather than a prescriptive initiative which will scare the Daily Mail. I for one will be very interested in seeing whether all the diversity credentials of the big City firms will stand up under class scrutiny, especially the Magic Circle. I hope that the LSB will also be asking lawyers whether they were schooled in the state or independent sectors and how that plays out at Partner level.
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Vercingetorix | 14-Feb-2011 12:24 pm
Presumably we will have the option of ticking a box that says "It's none of your business"?
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Anonymous | 14-Feb-2011 12:30 pm
My parents never went to university, neither did my older siblings but I did.
This is all about class indication, encouraging those from lower class background to move up the social hierarchy.
My question is whether this will actually help improve anything or whether it could be open to abuse? What about if firms refuse to take part? Will the LSB name and shame?
Firms are doing a lot more to encourage social diversity, but a lot more needs to be done. This move, while admirable, is a drop in the ocean
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Anon | 14-Feb-2011 1:12 pm
City law firms are full of very average (and frequently, not very nice) people . The number of truly 'exceptional' individuals in City firms is very low and in truth they often don't do well as they make others feel threatened.
The work of a City lawyer generally requires an IQ of no more than 110, and little or no creativity, originality or insight.
Most of those very average City lawyers have close relatives who are lawyers, business owners, accountants etc. There should be a simple rule: you cannot become a City lawyer if any close relative fits into one of these categories.
Such a rule will have zero impact on the output of the firms, but a drastic one on social mobility.
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Helen | 14-Feb-2011 1:23 pm
I echo this:
"Presumably we will have the option of ticking a box that says "It's none of your business"?"
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Elephant | 14-Feb-2011 2:05 pm
The one good thing about the current situation is that it concentrates a large amount of unpleasant people in one profession, thereby limiting the amount of contact that the rest of the population need have with them.
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Vandelay | 14-Feb-2011 3:18 pm
This plan to improve "social diversity" appears to overlook the possibility that if both parents went to uni they might just have more able and intelligent children. It is therefore inevitable that those children will be over represented in the more academic professions, such as the law.
The only way to reverse this would be to discriminate against those children on the grounds of who there parents were, rather judging them on merit. I thought that this sort of discrimination was precisely what we were trying to avoid
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Richard | 14-Feb-2011 3:29 pm
How does this assist in monitoring social mobility today?
Neither of my parents went to university but I am a white middle class male who went to public school and I now work in a top 10 firm.
All it demonstrates is that my parents moved up the social ladder before I started school and long before anyone cared about whether law firms were sufficiently diverse.
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