Will the profession finally add class to its diversity stats?
New Research commissioned for The Lawyer has exposed the extent to which the legal profession is dominated by the wealthy, just as the Government unveils a new campaign to drive elitism out of the profession.
The study, carried out by Bristol University-based Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO), found that lawyers are more likely to come from a privileged background than any other profession and that the gap has increased during the past decade.
Geoffrey Vos QC, who sits on Labour’s new social mobility commission under MP Alan Milburn, admitted there was a problem but told The Lawyer that things were starting to change.
“The legal profession exists to service society. It won’t service society properly if it only employs people from one background,” he said. “What I’m trying to do, and the Social Mobility Foundation is trying to do, is to make sure that people coming in now, born in 1985 or later, are from all backgrounds.”
Firms including Addleshaw Goddard, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Clifford Chance, Field Fisher Waterhouse, Macfarlanes and Taylor Wessing, have signed up to the Social Mobility Foundation’s mentoring scheme for disadvantaged children, chaired by Vos.
But few can deny that the law lags behind other professional and City jobs when it comes to recruiting those from poorer backgrounds.
According to the CMPO research, taking wealth as an indicator of social standing, when investment bankers and stockbrokers born in 1970 reached the age of 16, their families’ average monthly income was £1,885 and £1,623 respectively. This was on average 22 per cent and 44 per cent less than lawyers’ family income, which stood at £2,300. Over the past 12 years the gap between what lawyers’ families earn and what the families of other professionals earn has widened further.
Dr Lee Elliott Major, research director for education charity the Sutton Trust, argued that there are a number of reasons for the legal profession’s poor performance on social mobility.
These include a lack of good careers advice in many schools, the cost of getting legal qualifications and a perception that law is elitist.
“Law is perceived to be a profession that’s not for the likes of us,” he said. “That comes across in survey after survey.”
Part of the problem is that although few people would accuse lawyers of outright bias, there remains a view that it is not the industry’s problem and that firms can only chose from the candidates put in front of them.
One TheLawyer.com reader posted a comment that read: “I’m going to be brutally honest and say I disagree with the concept of ‘social mobility’ because it’s patronising and removes any notion that the legal profession is, and should be, based upon meritocracy. It’s not about your background – it’s about how hard you are prepared to work to achieve in a very tough industry.”
But Major said this view was “not good enough”. He believes there is a vast pool of untapped talent being ignored by the profession.
“If law firms don’t do it themselves, who else is going to?” he retorted. “They could help in raising aspirations and providing advice early on. We want law to represent the society it’s intended to service.”
The Sutton Trust runs its own mentoring scheme called Pathways to Law, which identifies bright pupils at age 16 and provides them with careers guidance and contacts in the legal profession.
It is run in partnership with the College of Law.
Despite this, social mobility remains a forgotten issue for many. Law firms and chambers have arguably been quicker to embrace more fashionable diversity issues. As one poster on TheLawyer.com put it: “I think it’s about time that the question of socio-economic background is tackled alongside the ‘traditional’ diversity issues of gender, ethnic background and sexuality.”
Vos argued that there might also be cultural reasons for the lack of lawyers from working class backgrounds. “One of the reasons is that, certainly at
the bar, it’s a profession of presentation,” he explained.
“Therefore when young people come into the profession, if they come from a poor background they won’t naturally present as well as people from public schools and top universities.”
Although chambers are now realising that these skills can be taught, Vos said there was a long way to go. Shortly after becoming social mobility commissioner, Milburn singled out the bar in a speech, noting that seven out of 10 of the country’s top barristers went to public school.
Adding to the problem is the fact that most firms only recruit from a select group of universities, which have a disproportionate number of privileged students.
“A lot of law firms only look at graduates from the top universities. They need to look for talented candidates who come through lesser universities,” Vos said.
The legal profession does not hold all the answers. But if Milburn is to realise his aim of giving everyone “a fair crack of the whip”, law firms and chambers must do more to shed their elitist image.
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Readers' comments (15)
anonymous | 2-Feb-2009 2:18 pm
Personally...
I'd be more sympathetic to working class people if they didn't waste so much of their money on designer clothes, over-priced trainers and Sky telly. No-one's going to thank me for pointing that out, but someone had to, didn't they?
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Andy | 2-Feb-2009 3:24 pm
Re: Personally...
"I'd be more sympathetic to working class people if they didn't waste so much of their money on designer clothes, over-priced trainers and Sky telly. No-one's going to thank me for pointing that out, but someone had to, didn't they?"
No.
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Anonymous | 2-Feb-2009 5:03 pm
Anyone actually asked any working class lawyers?
... about their experiences??
I come from a very working class background. I spent 3 years as a lawyer at a large commercial firm and, quite frankly, was surrounded by people who were completely unlike me. Their values were different, their experiences were different. One trainee in my year even got the contract because her dad was very friendly with the Managing Partner. Just look at the interests of lawyers - golf, horse riding, opera... does this really tally up with what the average person on the street enjoys? No. And then the politics... the backstabbing. By and large, with someone from the working classes you know where you stand. Lawyers are way too nice to each other, and way to ready to backstab.
The field IS extremely uneven. Working class kids usually don't have as settled a home life, more often have to work during the holidays and can't rely on mummy or daddy's friends to give them work experience. There was one guy on my course at university who sent his coursework home... so that his dad could have one of his trainees do it.
Fortunately for me, I got out and found another profession I'm currently really enjoying - it's tough right now with the economy, but I'm infinitely happier now that I ever was as a lawyer, and all because I'm not surrounded by up-themselves idiots all day.
Good to see so many of you getting laid off.
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Anonymous | 2-Feb-2009 6:06 pm
Last Post
Well done on showing your intelligence by not stereotyping "the working classes" there. Bravo.
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Tax lawyer from a comprehensive school | 2-Feb-2009 6:21 pm
Gawd bless the Labour party
One reason why the profession is so socio-economically homogenous is that Labour destroyed grammar schools, the system which allowed the able but financially unable to access good universities and then the professions.
If the government really wants to do something about diversity in the workplace, it should start at the root of the problem by improving state education so that the not-so-wealthy can access good universities and compete with the wealthier counterparts.
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Paul | 2-Feb-2009 9:14 pm
Failings of the legal profession
Those from privileged backgrounds tend to present themselves better (e.g. appearance, speech and manners.) However, firms fail to recognise that they have been given every possible aid to get to were they are (e.g. private school, funding for degree and connections).
Those from less privileged backgrounds have been more resilient, determined and dedicated. I am not meaning discriminate against those from privileged backgrounds just to illustrate the point that those individuals that not had all the assistance tend possess alternate qualities and in my opinion superior qualities.
Furthermore, to anonymous. Your naive view perfectly represents those individual in the legal profession who wrongfully generalise those that have to endure greater hardships then you can appreciate.
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Anonymous | 3-Feb-2009 3:11 am
Let's not stereotype
I don't know what has caused anonymous to come to the conclusion that working class people "waste so much of their money on designer clothes, over-priced trainers and Sky telly" but I can assure you that the majority of the working class are not like that.
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Anonymous | 3-Feb-2009 4:38 pm
Stereotypes have nothing to do with it
The so-called 'working class' are just as likely as the professional/privileged to be interested in golf, horse-riding and opera. And it is silly to say that only those from privileged backgrounds have homogenous interests within their 'class' group.
In my large commercial practice everyone has their own interests - some (many) are into football, some are into country sports, some into rugby and cricket and some hiking and sailing, and we're from all sorts of backgrounds. However life is like that - generally you won't end up working anywhere where all your colleagues are the same or where they all have the same background - imagine how tedious that would be. Anonymous is worried about office politics and says that the 'working class' do not participate in such matters - what nonsense. People are people - and everyone is occasionally tempted to gossip behind a colleague's back, or present a smiling face to a colleague one doesn't really like that much. It's life, and it happens in the stock room at your local corner shop as well as in the board room of your top 20 law firm. Do you think that children who go into the family line of business (of whatever size) all work their way to the top - of course not. One is just as likely to jump ahead of other chambermaids to end up assistant manager of a B&B as one is to get a TC based on a parent's nodding acquaintance with the managing partner - in fact more likely given that most top firms have rigourous interview and selection procedures involving multiple partners so that no one individual can impose a person on the firm. It's possible the trainee you speak of got her interview based on family connections - but i'd bet she performed well in interview as well. And it's rather unfair to characterise everyone unlike you as an 'up-themselves idiot' - i might just as fairly describe the 'working-class' colleagues I've known in the past as chippy uncouth fools.
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James E. Petts | 4-Feb-2009 3:07 pm
Wealth is not class; ability tends to begat ability
It is nonsense to conflate wealth, class and "privilege" - they are entirely separate, and each do not entail the other.
It is perfectly possible for a person doing a job traditionally considered to be of low social status (e.g., plumber, construction worker) to be considerably more wealthy than occupations traditionally considered to be of high social status, such as teaching. Equally, it is possible for wealthy parents to give their children a very poor upbringing, which children as a result cannot honestly be described as "privileged".
No doubt, given the absence of any subsidy or subsidised loan for the necessary specific qualifications for entry into the legal profession, wealth per se is an advantage (although commercial rate loans are available, so the absence of family wealth is not a complete bar to entry).
It ought also be considered that people strongly tend to marry (and therefore have children with) people similar to themselves, such that hard-working and successful people will tend to have children with other hard-working and successful people, and the combined genetic and environmental influence from that parentage and upbringing is considerably more likely to produce children who are hard-working and successful than those born to parents who are neither. Similarly, people who tend to be more intellectual are more likely to have children with other people who tend to be more intellectual, and therefore produce children with similar characteristics (intellect being something both that tends to enable people to be more wealthy and successful, and something necessary to do well in the legal profession). It does not inevitably follow, of course, in each case: there will always be exceptions - but it is a general tendency, and one that most certainly should not be discounted when interpreting the results of extremely vague surveys such as these.
In response to the question “If law firms don’t do it themselves, who else is going to?” posed by the person interviewed - the obvious answer is the individuals who want a career in law. Why on earth should people from any background sit back and wait for careers to find them? It is the responsibility of everyone who wants a serious career to take active steps from an early age to consider what sort of career to pursue and to pursue it. It is abject nonsense to suggest that anybody has any sort of duty to make people want to join any particular profession.
As to the concept of "representation", that is seriously misconceived: the function of the legal profession is not to "represent" people in the sense of be comprised of people in equal proportions to the general population: it is to provide legal services. There is no basis whatsoever to suggest that people cannot adequately provide legal services to people dissimilar to themselves, and it is consider pernicious bigotry to suggest to the contrary.
Any given specialist job will inevitably take a non-representative sample of the population, as the characteristics required for success in such a job are likely to be such as to favour people that have those characteristics, who often also tend to have other associated characteristics as a consequence or antecedent cause. The only proper and legitimate basis for selection of any candidate for any position in any profession under any circumstances whatsoever is merit - anything less than that amounts to prejudice bigotry and is extremely serious misconduct.
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Plain Speaker | 4-Feb-2009 3:25 pm
Moral high ground
Very glad I'm not a client of James E Petts if his letters of advice read like that posting !
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