Legal Week research reveals educational diversity of top 20 firms

Linklaters has the highest percentage of privately educated lawyers among the UK top 20 law firms by revenue, according to a major research project by Legal Week.

Legal Week's 2012 Employee Satisfaction Report (ESR), which questioned more than 5,000 associates across leading UK and US law firms about their educational background as part of a survey on their satisfaction with their work and choice of firm, found 57.5% of Linklaters' respondents were privately educated.

The figure puts the magic circle firm narrowly ahead of Ashurst, Hogan Lovells and CMS Cameron McKenna on 54%, 53% and 53% respectively among the 20 largest firms by revenue.

At the other end of the scale, Irwin Mitchell leads the pack in terms of educational diversity, with only 27.5% of associates responding to the survey from private school backgrounds.

Bird & Bird had the next lowest number of privately educated lawyers at 29.4%, marginally ahead of DLA Piper at 33%. On average across the whole of the top 20, 43.4% of respondents were privately educated.

Felix Hebblethwaite, global engagement and diversity manager at Linklaters, said:  "We recognise the need for a diverse working population and started to collect data from our own people about their socio-economic background in 2010. We hold this data on 70% of our UK employees, which shows only 31% of our associates attended a private school."

Stuart Henderson, chair of Irwin Mitchell's social responsibility board, said: "Here it is not about where you are from, it is about what you can bring to the firm and what you can achieve, so this is welcome recognition for thework we have done in improving the diversity of our people at all levels."

The overall ESR report found Hogan Lovells, Berwin Leighton Paisner and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are leading their UK peers when it comes to lawyers' satisfaction with their work and choice of firm.

The ESR is based on responses from 5,242 UK-based qualified lawyers below partner.

For more information on the report, contact Paul Birk on 0207 316 9864 or email [email protected].