Clifford Chance (CC) has backed a study proposing a set of new social mobility initiatives for graduate recruitment in the legal industry, including a new university ranking system.

As part of findings sponsored by CC, diversity recruitment company Rare is devising a number of tests and schemes to help City law firms reduce unconscious bias in the graduate hiring process.

In July, Rare will pilot a pre-Legal Practice Course (LPC) training programme, which aims to train and offer work experience to candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds who have not secured training contracts but meet the LPC grade requirements.

The company is also building a university ranking system to compare candidates' grades according to the averages of each module in a university degree, for each year and subject.

Aside from CC, Rare has nine law firm clients including Allen & Overy (A&O), Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Slaughter and May, as well as corporates including Barclays and Google, which would be able to use the products for their recruitment through Rare. However, Rare is also calling for all law firms to consider adopting similar initiatives in their hiring processes.

CC graduate recruitment and development manager Laura Yeates said: "These [new] products are exciting as they have the potential to improve our selection process, for example by reducing bias, while at the same time ensuring it remains robust.

"With our focus on finding the strongest candidates, we are also very interested in using Rare's contextualisation of university grades as a way of providing a deeper analysis of academic performance."

Rare managing director Raphael Mokades (pictured) added: "All the firms know there are candidates that are clearly good on paper but are not getting anywhere; the key thing is to unlock the potential of high-value candidates that may otherwise be overlooked."

The news follows A&O and Slaughter and May signing up to the company's "Discuss" social mobility initiative earlier this year, which aims to improve awareness of corporate law and the application process for second-year university students from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds.

CC is a founding partner of the scheme, which was trialled with the University of Oxford last year and has extended to universities including Cambridge and a number of London universities.

CC offered training contracts to six of the 14 participating students, with a further two offered day workshops with the firm.

It is understood that a further two top 10 City firms are set to join the initiative next year.