Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) and Baker McKenzie have made it into the top 10 of a City of London Corporation-backed ranking of the UK's top employers for social mobility.

The Social Mobility Index 2018, created by the Social Mobility Foundation and Social Mobility Commission and sponsored by The City of London Corporation, evaluates employers' engagement with disadvantaged people as well as their recruitment and selection processes, in order to measure their social mobility performance.

Big Four accountant KPMG was ranked top, with recently merged BCLP the highest-placed law firm in fourth place – up from eighth place for legacy Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) last year, following BLP's merger with US firm Bryan Cave this April.

On why the firm was ranked so highly, BCLP co-chair Lisa Mayhew (pictured) said: "During the past year we initiated a research project to challenge stereotypes within the whole legal industry, in collaboration with the Bridge Group and the Sutton Trust. We interviewed and spoke with a lot of young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who were already in the profession, to get their insights into what the profession needs to do to improve. That has been quite a major work effort over the past year."

BCLP has a dedicated social inclusion and ethnicity group, led by partners Tim Smith and Segun Osuntokun, that focuses on outreach to schools, work experience, mentoring and opportunities for school leavers. Last year, the firm ran a two-week 'career kick start' work experience programme targeting candidates from lower socioeconomic backgrounds

"If you have a more diverse mix of people coming through your business, you're going to have a richer culture of innovation, ideas and, importantly, people who resemble our clients," said Mayhew. "We need to maintain our effectiveness of building relationships with our clients, as well as it being the right thing to do."

Bakers was the next highest-ranked law firm in 10th place, up one place from last year. Other firms to make it into the top 20 included Linklaters (11), Herbert Smith Freehills (15) and Freeths (19).

Linklaters global and diversity recruitment manager Andre Flemmings said: "Last year we started work on trying to demystify the application processes as a way of levelling the playing field. The aim is to ensure that a lack of information ceases to be a reason for underperformance, or worse, candidates self-selecting out of applying to us in the first place.

"We are very focused on storytelling and sharing perspectives, both internally and externally.  Internally, we launched our 'Diverse Voices Reverse Mentoring' programme in January 2018. More than 20 senior partners – including our senior and managing partners – were mentored by junior staff, including both lawyers and business team members."

Other law firms to make the cut included Clifford Chance (22), Eversheds Sutherland (23) Hogan Lovells (36), DLA Piper (38), HFW (44), Slaughter and May (45), Mayer Brown (47) and Dentons (48).

HFW senior corporate responsibility manager Kathryn Hull said the firm had made "real strides in welcoming talent from a more diverse range of backgrounds" and that the percentage of the firm's trainees who are the first of their family to go to university had increased from 10% in 2015 to 33% in 2018.

However, despite such evidence of progress, the Social Mobility Foundation report found that more than 80% of law firm hires still come from Russell Group universities, with 90% of some firms' recruits coming from these universities, even when only half of their applicants come from these institutions.