Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has called on the legal profession to 'open its doors wider' and do more to offer alternative routes into law in his latest appeal to UK businesses to boost social mobility.

The Deputy Prime Minister made the remarks in a speech to the Financial Services Lawyers Association yesterday (11 October), in which he called for the profession to be more open to people of diverse backgrounds and stamp out nepotism.

Clegg (pictured) said: "A fair society is an open society – and the professions urgently need to be opened up. The legal profession has made some progress, but not enough. You have to do better. You have to open your doors wider. Your profession judges and represents people in court – so it should represent them in membership too."

In the speech, Clegg also drew on a number of statistics to back up his assertions, including the claims that 70% of high court judges and 68% of top barristers are privately educated; more than half of solicitors attended independent schools; that only one in four partners are women; and nine out of ten QCs are male, including nineteen out of twenty who are white.

The Liberal Democrat leader's address comes after he headed up the launch of Government 'business compact' scheme in April this year, which saw a number of major UK businesses – including accountancy giants KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers – sign up to provide internships for pupils from deprived backgrounds.

Allen & Overy (A&O) was the first law firm to sign up to the charter, and in his speech yesterday Clegg urged others to follow suit.

A&O was also one of the key players behind the recent launch of the PRIME initiative, which marks the first industry-wide effort to improve social mobility in the legal profession.

The scheme initially comprised 23 law firms across the UK and Ireland, which have committed to take on under-privileged children for work experience placements in a bid to motivate them to target a career within the legal industry, either as lawyers or support staff.

A&O senior partner David Morley said: "Law firms have been doing a lot on an individual basis to improve access to the profession for a number of years. We recognise more can be done, which is why we launched PRIME – to provide an industry-wide standard that provides fairer access to quality work experience."

Since PRIME's launch, a number of other UK firms have signalled their intention to sign up for the project, including Macfarlanes, Hill Dickinson and Mills & Reeve, as well as the London offices of several US firms.