The rise of the work placement has made it even more difficult for poorer youngsters to break into the legal profession. James Boxell attended a DLA Piper PRIME diversity week to see whether the scheme could help address the problem

As someone whose mother is a teaching assistant and whose father is "basically AWOL", Georgia Stores is a good person to ask about what is more likely to stop her becoming a high-flying corporate lawyer: being working class or being female.

After a pause to consider her answer, this bright and personable student at the Islington 6th Form Consortium in north London says: "Class is a bigger barrier than being a woman. I think there has been progress on women, but the biggest barrier for someone like me is expectation."

Stores is responding to questions after presenting to a group of fellow pupils and a lawyer at DLA Piper's City headquarters – part of a week-long programme of activities organised by the firm for the PRIME diversity initiative.

She closes her Q&A session on the upbeat note that "in the end I do think any of us can do it". But her opinions on class are revealing nonetheless, getting to the heart of why 36 of the UK's top 50 law firms have signed up to PRIME – a nationwide work experience scheme designed to counter the notoriously nepotistic allocation of internships and placements in the legal profession.

While nobody could say that women find it easy in the workaholic culture of leading law firms, especially if they want to balance a career with motherhood, class bias is arguably even more insidious and acts as a block to talented people at an earlier age.

Admittedly this is part of the broader British decline in social mobility. But the big law firms clearly have specific problems. In a depressing example of the ingrained snobbery in parts of the profession, some firms decline to publish statistics about their lawyers' social and educational backgrounds because of fears that well-heeled rivals would use it as a stick with which to beat them.prime-web

As Julia Garrett, an associate in DLA Piper's debt finance team who helped out with mock interviews of the Islington pupils, puts it: "There is a huge divide in what kind of person becomes a lawyer so it is really important to change the preconception in people's minds that this is not a realistic option for them. I think you can see that is happening here when you talk to the kids."

Indeed, the PRIME initiative and championing of broader access by firms such as DLA Piper is at least an attempt to improve the chances of poorer students. Some 750 placements were provided by signatory firms in the scheme's first year, while it is estimated that more than 1,000 were taken up in year two. The aim is to get to 2,500 a year by 2015.

The PRIME efforts have been praised by Alan Milburn, the Government's social mobility tsar, who has lauded some law firm leaders for taking the issue seriously, while stressing that the background of law students did not change much in 2012.

Among those leaders is Janet Legrand (pictured, below left), DLA Piper's senior elected board member, part of a generation of state-educated lawyers who believe that the demise of the grammar school system and the increasing weight placed on work placements have done huge damage to the prospects of working class youngsters.

"Alan Milburn said to me that the high point in terms of social mobility, the year to be born, was 1958. Well I was born in 1958 so that resonates," says Legrand, whose parents left school at 14. "And I think there are many senior people who got into the law from a state school background for whom it would be difficult now because work experience has become really important, and getting onto a programme if you don't have connections is a problem."

Mike Tanner, a DLA Piper associate who ran the presentation workshop for the Islington pupils, agrees. "I did find it hard when looking for a training contract given the importance of having done work experience," says Tanner, whose father is an electrician and mother is a hairdresser. "When finding a placement it can often be about friends of family, or that kind of thing."

Casting a wider net

In terms of the pupils, the 12 Islington sixth formers are an excellent cross-sample of what the profession will continue to miss out on unless it opens up. Serious, enthusiastic and in many cases fearsomely intelligent, they all gave up their half-term break to spend the week at DLA Piper.

"It is all about casting the net far wider to unearth real talent," says Legrand. "That's where I'm coming from. I was in the first year of women at my college at university and their position in the league tables went up massively because they were recruiting from 100 per cent of the gene pool rather than 50 per cent. It's pretty obvious stuff."

Legal Week sat in on PRIME sessions on presentation skills, job interviews and higher education workshops, but the intensive week-long programme ranged widely from negotiating tactics and pitching to shadowing lawyers and getting pupils to assess their own employability.

In the presentation session, students gave thoughtful talks on subjects such as video game violence and imitating celebrities. During mock job interviews – conducted by two DLA Piper lawyers and a group from the Royal Bank of Scotland, a banking client – the students' initial awkwardness eased visibly once they moved onto the second round of chats.legrand-and-abdimalik-musa-web

Esther Thornton, a legal director in DLA Piper's planning team who took part in the interviews, and was the first in her family to attend university, says: "It was a very impressive bunch, they took it all extremely seriously. We need to match our clients better so I hope this does make a difference. There is much more diversity at our clients than there is at law firms."

DLA Piper does not interfere in the schools' selection of pupils to attend the programme, beyond the PRIME stipulation that they should either have received free school meals at some point, be at a school with a higher than average free school meal intake, or be their first family generation to go to university.

At the beginning of the week, seven of the 12 said they were interested in a legal career. This did not change by the end of the week, but there was a firming up of intentions. DLA Piper and the participants also stressed the scheme's value for those who did not envisage becoming a lawyer – with a week at a big law firm a handy addition to university applications and CVs.

"I don't want to be a lawyer, I want to do science at university," says Abdimalik Musa (pictured, above right), one of the pupils. "But being here has taught me a lot about how to handle myself in a professional environment. And learning how to negotiate and pitch is useful for anybody."

Remus Cozma, another participant, says: "I'm interested in being a lawyer and I've learned a lot about the different sectors, which gives you a more informed view. You also get more confident about interviews and presentations. It's been a great experience."

In one of the liveliest sessions, where a DLA Piper corporate associate spoke about working an all-nighter on an M&A deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds, there was also a dawning recognition that a commercial lawyer's life need not be a lifeless alternative to the sexy TV portrayals of criminal barristers.

The sixth formers were riveted as the young lawyer spoke about the "pure adrenaline" of signing a big deal at the end of a working day that began at 9am and finished at 5am, finished off with a celebratory bottle of champagne.

The next challenge

For PRIME members, the trick will be making sure this kind of engagement is sustained as youngsters make the choices that determine their careers. DLA Piper acknowledges that it needs to work out how to track pupils once placements are finished, and possibly to provide further guidance. But it also stresses that the participants' future success will depend on their own drive and ambition – once they have been encouraged to set expectations higher.

"We hope we can kindle a fire in these kids," says Legrand. "But then the challenge for them is that they need to be clever enough and hard-working enough. For me, it would be fantastic to have more kids with the background of PRIME candidates who are inspired to study the right subjects at university, getting the right grades so the firms end up employing them. The ideal would be to end up with a cohort of people who have engaged with you from an early stage and then joined your firm."

The profession is still a long way from that, and Legrand admits that future success depends on getting into the right universities. "If you look at the thousands of applications we get, however hard you try to be very broad in your outlook, naturally there are a lot of applications from Oxbridge and Russell Group universities. So the kids we get in for PRIME have to aspire to be reading law or an equivalent at one of those places."

But for Stores at least the week has been something of a personal revelation. "It's really filled me with confidence," she concludes. "I was slipping a bit in what I was thinking of doing, but this has made me rethink my future and the options I will go for. It may be competitive but I believe you will make it if you work hard enough. I do like the idea of commercial law. I wasn't too sure before but when I heard about the corporate stuff, I thought I'd really like that."