These days you often hear of social inclusion or diversity "moving up the agenda" of City law firms. But if I'm honest, years of covering the profession has led me to the view that the commercial sector, at least, generally doesn't much care about this stuff. What is usually meant when it is said that things are "moving up the agenda" is that people feel the need to discuss something or take cosmetic steps that will in reality have little impact, not to actually do much substantive. There's a world of difference between the former and the latter.

I don't offer this observation in a hand-wringing, isn't-it-awful way, just as a statement of fact that such issues have minimal relevance for lawyers practising at the City coalface. Law is a career based on highly-structured (and expensive) academic learning – as such, it's poorly suited to countering the inequities of our educational system.

And, to be frank, with successive governments, parliaments and the majority of voters having been willing to see the UK provide state education of hugely varying quality based on geography, there is a considerable limit to the extent that the profession can become a force for social mobility.

I'm not arguing that the legal profession shouldn't want to do its part in promoting social inclusion, and some do try. But what should that contribution be? There's precious little agreement on what is meant by tackling social exclusion, mobility or diversity, or how to handle it. To have much impact, the profession would have to rally around a handful of widely supported initiatives, and there is little sign of such a move – or of sufficient leadership from industry bodies to make it happen.

Such woolly thinking has also led to a repeated blurring of different issues with little regard as to whether the industry has a problem or not. I find the legal profession to be admirably liberal and accepting of the gay community but it's not uncommon to hear the profession's record in this regard damned. Likewise, discussion on ethnic minority representation ignores the fact that cosmopolitan City law firms are entirely comfortable with minorities as long as they're well educated and from a similar social background. It's those that don't fit into a narrowly-defined social box that they struggle to identify with (or hire).

Let's be honest, this inertia is because the law firm model, blessed as it is with huge numbers of highly-educated workers flocking to it every year, basically works. Even in the case of women in law, who make up over half the profession and where there is a clear business argument for law firms to do better at retaining senior female lawyers, the pyramid dynamics of the industry mean law firms don't 'need' to be progressive to be successful. Women lawyers have a right to expect better, but what the model wants, it usually gets. Perhaps it is time for a more honest debate.