After the the Milburn report sparked renewed claims of elitism in law, Charlotte Edmond assesses the debate about what firms can - and should - do to boost social mobility

It was inevitable that the recent report put together by former cabinet minister Alan Milburn would find professions such as law and medicine dominated by affluent, privately-educated individuals.

While social mobility has been on the political agenda for years, the professions have seen little change, with the majority of the UK's lawyers still coming from a select group of independently-educated pupils who go on to attend Russell Group universities.

Nevertheless, recent years have seen the City's major law firms wake up to the need to - or at least to the need to be seen to - attract talent from a wider pool and create a more diverse mix of young lawyers entering the profession.

According to Milburn's report, Unleashing Aspiration: The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, of all the professions, doctors and lawyers are the occupations whose members typically grew up in the most wealthy families.

The report, commissioned by the Government following the New Opportunities White Paper, lead to the creation of an 18-strong panel at the start of this year. The group, which was chaired by Milburn and included Lord David Neuberger as well as Geoffrey Vos QC, chairman of The Social Mobility Foundation, set out to examine the barriers and pathways to reaching professions for all people, regardless of their background.

The findings were hardly shocking, but made for stark reading. Lawyers born in 1970 typically grew up in families with income 64% higher than the average family, and, the report says, unless the trends of recent decades are reversed, the typical doctor or lawyer of the future will today be growing up in a family that is better off than five in six of all families in the UK.

Bearing in mind that the UK average for independently-schooled people stands just above 5%, the fact that somewhere in the region of 75% of the UK's judges and over 65% of top barristers were privately educated paints a depressing picture of how small the pool of talent feeding the profession is.

The figures put the Bar ahead of pretty much any other professional sector in terms of drawing from the privately-educated. Around 55% of solicitors, meanwhile, are independently schooled.

It is, however, worth pointing out that in a comparison between the 1980s and 2000s, solicitors saw a marked decrease in independently-schooled individuals compared to other occupations reviewed, and the report concludes that around 70% of solicitors were independently schooled 20 years ago.

Major programmes

A number of initiatives have sought to redress this lack of social diversity in the legal profession. The high-profile Sutton Trust is one of a number of organisations dedicated to broadening access, running its Pathways to Law initiative in conjunction with the College of Law. The £1.5m programme is aimed at giving students from state schools in England a chance to experience life in a City law firm. It targets students from under-represented backgrounds from year 12 onwards and is only open to pupils who will be the first in their family to attend university.

Run in association with its five partner universities - Leeds, the London School of Economics, Manchester, Southampton and Warwick - the scheme consists of university-based training, e-mentoring and firm placement.

Other programmes focused on opening up opportunities to sixth-form students include Pure Potential and Target Chances. Both schemes aim to change the aspirations of bright state-school educated students and run various events and workshops tutoring them in presentation and communication skills and putting together their personal statement and CV, for example. Deborah Dalgleish (pictured), head of trainee recruitment at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, comments: "The legal profession still has a long way to go, although much has been achieved in recent years. Collectively there are two key messages we need to communicate. The first involves giving people insight as to what the options are, what the profession involves and what skills are needed to succeed.

"Secondly, we need to break down the barriers caused by misconceptions - there is not a particular type of person that will get a job in law and a type that won't. Patently not everyone can be a lawyer, but provided they have the intelligence and other key skills needed to function in the profession, everyone should have an equal chance and should know that this is the case."

The City Solicitors' Education Trust works to similar aims and since 2008 has run a summer school for around 100 university students at a time. Ashurst consultant Roger Finbow, who has been heavily involved in the scheme since its outset, explains: "If your background is such that you can find out about the opportunities available or you have parents who have useful connections or who are knowledgeable in these things, then you automatically have a better start in your career. A lot of what we do is about giving knowledge and confidence to those people who don't have those opportunities."

Allen & Overy (A&O) is one of a number of firms taking things into its own hands and this summer launched its Kick Start programme, designed to offer young people from non-traditional backgrounds an insight into the world of business. The firm opened its doors to over 100 students aged 16 and 17 who took part in a series of interactive sessions which the firm hopes will help them learn skills like how to improve their personal impact, how to debate and how to work in a team. These sessions range from presenting a legal defence to playing a business game where students have to negotiate the sale of a fictional football club.

Jane Masey, HR policy and diversity manager at A&O, comments: "We have been involved in various projects both individually and as a profession for some time now. It is important to change the perception of the profession because for all the help and support you can give young people, it is not going to make a difference if they are not considering a career in the profession."

Changing the profession

However, while the efforts made by law firms and charities alike are laudable, it is apparent that the perception of the profession as closed to a certain category of people remains deep-rooted.

Many law firms are now making a conscious effort to widen the number of universities they tour and recruit from beyond the traditional Russell Group in an attempt to attract a more diverse group. However, by consensus, such efforts have so far had a limited impact.

A related issue for law firms is the amount of data they have on the social mix of their own staff, which would help firms shape their policies in this area. Although the use of diversity quotas is not widespread, the major firms are certainly monitoring their diversity levels, and most employ diversity or inclusion managers. As large, profitable entities, there is certainly pressure on firms to be seen ‘giving something back'.

Working with a broader base of universities is a good start, but many firms argue that the problem comes at a younger age than this, as many of the people they need to attract would not consider a good university, less so a career in law.

Coupled with this, firms argue that there is a limit to how far they can spread their net regarding universities, which puts more onus on ‘non-traditional' applicants to apply to the firms directly. The problem is, Finbow and others believe, many of those other candidates have been conditioned not to apply.

There is also a lingering resentment from the profession regarding the social mobility debate, with some criticising Milburn's report for retrenching the elitism perceptions of law. Others argue the report fails to put enough emphasis on the ‘supply-side' issues beyond law firms' control - meaning short-comings with the UK's state educational system.

Finbow comments: "The Milburn view is slightly simplistic in that the starting point has to be getting education right in the first place. No amount of sticking plaster when students are much older will fix the problem if they are not correctly educated in the first place, and there continues to be such a divide in our state schools."

While several of the schemes boast they have led students to gain vacation placements and even training contracts at City law firms, the actual numbers remain small. Many schemes are still too young to measure the true impact on social diversity at the bottom end of the profession. But with such an innate and limiting perception of the culture at the modern law firm, that is not to say that firms should give up trying - they just should not expect any quick-fix solutions.

Indeed, many neutral observers would argue that with the profession only recently attempting to deal with these issues, law firms can do a lot more to tackle social mobility than has been the case.

Sibyl Zao-Sanders at Pure Potential summarises: "Compared to a number of other professions we work with, the legal profession does have one of the worst reputations for accessibility. As a profession, law firms are working very hard to change the image that there is more to it than the ‘posh judges in wigs' stereotype, but there is still a long way to go."

After the the Milburn report sparked renewed claims of elitism in law, Charlotte Edmond assesses the debate about what firms can - and should - do to boost social mobility

It was inevitable that the recent report put together by former cabinet minister Alan Milburn would find professions such as law and medicine dominated by affluent, privately-educated individuals.

While social mobility has been on the political agenda for years, the professions have seen little change, with the majority of the UK's lawyers still coming from a select group of independently-educated pupils who go on to attend Russell Group universities.

Nevertheless, recent years have seen the City's major law firms wake up to the need to - or at least to the need to be seen to - attract talent from a wider pool and create a more diverse mix of young lawyers entering the profession.

According to Milburn's report, Unleashing Aspiration: The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, of all the professions, doctors and lawyers are the occupations whose members typically grew up in the most wealthy families.

The report, commissioned by the Government following the New Opportunities White Paper, lead to the creation of an 18-strong panel at the start of this year. The group, which was chaired by Milburn and included Lord David Neuberger as well as Geoffrey Vos QC, chairman of The Social Mobility Foundation, set out to examine the barriers and pathways to reaching professions for all people, regardless of their background.

The findings were hardly shocking, but made for stark reading. Lawyers born in 1970 typically grew up in families with income 64% higher than the average family, and, the report says, unless the trends of recent decades are reversed, the typical doctor or lawyer of the future will today be growing up in a family that is better off than five in six of all families in the UK.

Bearing in mind that the UK average for independently-schooled people stands just above 5%, the fact that somewhere in the region of 75% of the UK's judges and over 65% of top barristers were privately educated paints a depressing picture of how small the pool of talent feeding the profession is.

The figures put the Bar ahead of pretty much any other professional sector in terms of drawing from the privately-educated. Around 55% of solicitors, meanwhile, are independently schooled.

It is, however, worth pointing out that in a comparison between the 1980s and 2000s, solicitors saw a marked decrease in independently-schooled individuals compared to other occupations reviewed, and the report concludes that around 70% of solicitors were independently schooled 20 years ago.

Major programmes

A number of initiatives have sought to redress this lack of social diversity in the legal profession. The high-profile Sutton Trust is one of a number of organisations dedicated to broadening access, running its Pathways to Law initiative in conjunction with the College of Law. The £1.5m programme is aimed at giving students from state schools in England a chance to experience life in a City law firm. It targets students from under-represented backgrounds from year 12 onwards and is only open to pupils who will be the first in their family to attend university.

Run in association with its five partner universities - Leeds, the London School of Economics, Manchester, Southampton and Warwick - the scheme consists of university-based training, e-mentoring and firm placement.

Other programmes focused on opening up opportunities to sixth-form students include Pure Potential and Target Chances. Both schemes aim to change the aspirations of bright state-school educated students and run various events and workshops tutoring them in presentation and communication skills and putting together their personal statement and CV, for example. Deborah Dalgleish (pictured), head of trainee recruitment at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, comments: "The legal profession still has a long way to go, although much has been achieved in recent years. Collectively there are two key messages we need to communicate. The first involves giving people insight as to what the options are, what the profession involves and what skills are needed to succeed.

"Secondly, we need to break down the barriers caused by misconceptions - there is not a particular type of person that will get a job in law and a type that won't. Patently not everyone can be a lawyer, but provided they have the intelligence and other key skills needed to function in the profession, everyone should have an equal chance and should know that this is the case."

The City Solicitors' Education Trust works to similar aims and since 2008 has run a summer school for around 100 university students at a time. Ashurst consultant Roger Finbow, who has been heavily involved in the scheme since its outset, explains: "If your background is such that you can find out about the opportunities available or you have parents who have useful connections or who are knowledgeable in these things, then you automatically have a better start in your career. A lot of what we do is about giving knowledge and confidence to those people who don't have those opportunities."

Allen & Overy (A&O) is one of a number of firms taking things into its own hands and this summer launched its Kick Start programme, designed to offer young people from non-traditional backgrounds an insight into the world of business. The firm opened its doors to over 100 students aged 16 and 17 who took part in a series of interactive sessions which the firm hopes will help them learn skills like how to improve their personal impact, how to debate and how to work in a team. These sessions range from presenting a legal defence to playing a business game where students have to negotiate the sale of a fictional football club.

Jane Masey, HR policy and diversity manager at A&O, comments: "We have been involved in various projects both individually and as a profession for some time now. It is important to change the perception of the profession because for all the help and support you can give young people, it is not going to make a difference if they are not considering a career in the profession."

Changing the profession

However, while the efforts made by law firms and charities alike are laudable, it is apparent that the perception of the profession as closed to a certain category of people remains deep-rooted.

Many law firms are now making a conscious effort to widen the number of universities they tour and recruit from beyond the traditional Russell Group in an attempt to attract a more diverse group. However, by consensus, such efforts have so far had a limited impact.

A related issue for law firms is the amount of data they have on the social mix of their own staff, which would help firms shape their policies in this area. Although the use of diversity quotas is not widespread, the major firms are certainly monitoring their diversity levels, and most employ diversity or inclusion managers. As large, profitable entities, there is certainly pressure on firms to be seen ‘giving something back'.

Working with a broader base of universities is a good start, but many firms argue that the problem comes at a younger age than this, as many of the people they need to attract would not consider a good university, less so a career in law.

Coupled with this, firms argue that there is a limit to how far they can spread their net regarding universities, which puts more onus on ‘non-traditional' applicants to apply to the firms directly. The problem is, Finbow and others believe, many of those other candidates have been conditioned not to apply.

There is also a lingering resentment from the profession regarding the social mobility debate, with some criticising Milburn's report for retrenching the elitism perceptions of law. Others argue the report fails to put enough emphasis on the ‘supply-side' issues beyond law firms' control - meaning short-comings with the UK's state educational system.

Finbow comments: "The Milburn view is slightly simplistic in that the starting point has to be getting education right in the first place. No amount of sticking plaster when students are much older will fix the problem if they are not correctly educated in the first place, and there continues to be such a divide in our state schools."

While several of the schemes boast they have led students to gain vacation placements and even training contracts at City law firms, the actual numbers remain small. Many schemes are still too young to measure the true impact on social diversity at the bottom end of the profession. But with such an innate and limiting perception of the culture at the modern law firm, that is not to say that firms should give up trying - they just should not expect any quick-fix solutions.

Indeed, many neutral observers would argue that with the profession only recently attempting to deal with these issues, law firms can do a lot more to tackle social mobility than has been the case.

Sibyl Zao-Sanders at Pure Potential summarises: "Compared to a number of other professions we work with, the legal profession does have one of the worst reputations for accessibility. As a profession, law firms are working very hard to change the image that there is more to it than the ‘posh judges in wigs' stereotype, but there is still a long way to go."