Megan Stewart, Hogan Lovells

Growing up, the likelihood of Hogan Lovells trainee Megan Stewart ever working at a top U.K. law firm had been exceptionally small.

When she took her GCSEs at her local comprehensive school near to the tiny Nottinghamshire village where she grew up only 32% of her unusually large year group got a C or above in Maths or English.

Though she knew from a young age that she wanted to be a lawyer, by studying at a school with such a poor reputation and as a would-be first generation university student, Megan's chances of reaching her goal were slim.

With no connections to the industry, and no support forthcoming from the teachers at her comprehensive school, it was left to Megan to pull herself through school.

This came in the form of re-writing her school's teaching syllabus in order to maximise her grades, at which she did such a good job that her younger sister was being taught using Megan's syllabus when she took the same exams a few years later.

And when working on her exams to get into university, Megan changed her entire year's timetable in order to be able to do the lessons she needed to do in order to achieve her dream. She even talked her geography teachers into running an after-school class for people who wanted to get an A or A* grade.

While none of these moves particularly endeared Megan to her classmates or teachers, she says now that she doesn't regret doing what she did. When the final results were given and her classmates achieved higher grades than expected, several expressed how grateful they were to Megan.

The biggest hurdles

But despite having achieved the necessary grades to get onto a law course at Nottingham University, Megan says that the biggest obstacles to her pursuing a career in law were not, at their core, academic. Exposure to the industry, and the personal drive that comes from knowing what you want to do, are both the most important in encouraging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply for a career in the law, she believes.

"Without any sort of exposure to that kind of life, it's really difficult for a person to visualise that career in the future," she says. "You can't even think to yourself, 'this is what my life could look like if I work hard'.

"How on earth can you drum up the drive to work hard at school and take that drive to apply for university? Some people have more supportive families, receive more support at school et cetera, but without having that exposure and seeing what your life could be like in, say, five years' time, you never know what you could be missing. And I think that was the biggest limiting factor for me growing up."

"I still feel like someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say, 'What are you doing here? This place isn't for you'"

Even something as simple as watching cheesy television programmes about what it was like to be a lawyer helped her to picture herself becoming one, Megan says.

Aged 16, she took part in social mobility foundation The Sutton Trust's Pathways to Law programme, which is aimed at giving young people exposure to the legal industry. Through the scheme, Megan met barristers and solicitors, where she asked everyone how she could become like them one day.

When at Nottingham University, she applied for the Trust's extended social mobility programme focused on getting university students into a career in corporate law, through which she attended open days at top firms, including Hogan Lovells.

It was there that she met one of her mentors, Nicholas Cheffings, former global chairman of the firm and the current chair of PRIME Commitment, which offers work experience at law firms for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"You need to remember that your experience isn't less than other people's — it's just different"

She is now in her second seat at the firm, but Megan says that the experience of entering the profession, when it came, was "incredibly daunting".

"I still feel like someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say 'What are you doing here? This place isn't for you'". It's a self-confidence thing and I know that everyone has feelings like that, but when you do the LPC and you're around well-educated people from Oxford, you think, 'how am I supposed to compete with these people in my career?'

"But then I realised that I have been competing against these people this whole time, ever since school. You need to remember that your experience isn't less than other people's — it's just different. But you have to really keep telling yourself that and building that self-confidence through your career, and that is something that will take time."

Closing the gap

And having time to realise that a career in law might be for them is not necessarily something that people from lower socio-economic backgrounds have in excess. Megan emphasises the need for law firms to push their recruitment techniques at school-age children.

"Law firms are really trying to do a good job, but they're mostly just trying to recruit from a wider range from universities. All I can think is, how many people are you missing out on reaching by the time they get to university?"

"All I can think is, how many people are you missing out on reaching by the time they get to university?"

Talking about her year group's GCSE grades, Megan says that she's not surprised that so many people with a similar background to hers lose sight of their goals. "When you're up against statistics like that, it's hardly surprising. When I think about the people who didn't 'succeed', at least in the most stereotypical way, it is not because of their lack of ability — it's lack of vision, because there wasn't anyone there telling them that they can do whatever they want to do."

Geography is another huge challenge for the industry to overcome. Sending associates to talk to children at a school in London is something that, while a valuable contribution, does not require a particularly large amount of effort from law firms with a huge footprint in the city. Plus, Megan says, just being in the capital and seeing high-flying types walking around helps young people living there to envisage that kind of future for themselves.

For young people living outside of the London bubble, and particularly those living in rural areas, things are different. Law firms are loathe to trek up to under-performing schools just to do a short assembly with disengaged children.

But Megan says that these things "can be really invaluable in the long-term" and will have a profound effect on improving the diversity of the industry — something that law firm clients have been pushing for in more recent years. "Law firms," she says, "need to get on board with that."

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