Research reveals widening social divide in the profession
More than one in seven lawyers come from private schools, despite just one in 50 of the population receiving private education, new research has suggested.
While 93% of the population are state educated, only 85% of lawyers went to non-public schools, according to an analysis of nearly 50,000 lawyers’ profiles on business networking site LinkedIn, by legal recruiter Laurence Simons.
Of the 49,600 lawyers’ profiles analysed, 7,200 attended one of the country’s 250 public schools.
Laurence Simons pointed to ‘the demise of grammar schools and the prolonged decline in academic standards in the state sector’ as the key reason for the discrepancy.
Laurence Simons director Jason Horobin said that 53% of magic circle solicitors and 82% of barristers were educated at Oxbridge.
‘The figures paint a disturbingly regressive picture of the opportunities open to those wishing to get into law,’ he said. ‘Social exclusivity is rife in the industry. This is a real policy blind spot: a lot has been done to address the under-representation of women and ethnic minority groups, and we’re at least on the way to tackling those issues. But the under-representation of those who can’t afford a silver-plated education is getting worse, not better.
‘As far as a candidate’s prospects as a lawyer are concerned, the ability of a student’s school to propel him or her into the best universities will directly affect their employability later on. With 53% of magic circle solicitors and 82% of barristers having been educated at Oxbridge, there is a clear link between competitiveness when entering higher education and the ability to achieve a legal career after university.’
He added: ‘This doesn’t appear to be a case of wanton snobbery on behalf of legal employers – in many ways, Britain’s blue-chip legal employers are simply reacting to the decline of state education. The overwhelming conclusion must be that if your children aspire to a successful legal career and you are choosing them a school, it pays to pay.’
Laurence Simons also suggested that between 1988 and 2004, the proportion of privately educated magic circle partners aged under 39 grew from 59% to 71%; and that in the late 1980s, 10% fewer barristers and 15% fewer solicitors were privately educated than in the early 2000s.
In 1958, slightly more than 40% of lawyers grew up in families with an above-average income, whereas in 1970, 60% of lawyers grew up in families with an above-average income, the recruitment firm said.
In 1997, 83% of those who achieved three A-levels came from state schools, but by 2007, only 70% were state educated, said Laurence Simons.
Comments
The training contract is the problem
The training contract is a clever and calculated way of keeping the law for the elite, and creating artificial barriers to entry into the profession. It's also a way of keeping salaries high, as an oversupply of lpc graduates would drive down wages.
I do not believe that the reason why the privately educated dominate the profession is because of declining standards in state schools. If that's the case, why are these law firms more than happy to take on paralegals from state school backgrounds, and get them to do the work and pay them peanuts, and in some cases for no pay at all. Paralegals are exploited by this soulless profession. Furthermore just because someone is privately educated doesn't necessarily mean they will make better trainees. I've seen plenty of trainees struggle to do basic tasks, and I've seen newly qualified solicitors who have no clue how to do the job they were supposedly trained in, and asking the paralegals to take them through the process. Some of these privately educated people look good on paper and sound good, but they lack common sense.
The LPC is a money making scheme, and a complete and utter waste of time and money. I would encourage all law graduates to think very carefully before embarking on this course. Do your research first! Also, it seems to me like ABS and outsourcing of work will have a profound effect on the profession.
I
Social divide and legal shops
The solicitors tier of the legal profession has effectively been down-graded by the emergence of legal shops on the high street and this is even before the full introduction of ABSs. Eventually the message will get through to pre-university students that the legal world has changed. Fewer lawyers will be required in high street law and there will be many more call centre type jobs and customer service adviser jobs. Such jobs will be largely taken up by the lower classes. Privately educated students will not aspire to be high street "supervisor" solicitors as being in charge of retail staff (possibly in uniforms) will not give them any higher social status as the old style job of solicitor did. Therefore, it follows that the high street solicitors of the future are likely to come from the lower middle class and below. It will be interesting to see the statistics 10 years after the introduction of ABSs.
Is it the training contract?
Or recruitment procedures? On another side a recruiter at a City firm proudly announced she preferred candidates who had the most interesting gap years. That in itself is going to help the privately educated - those who don't need to worry about money.
When I was at univ I applied for two dozen vacation placements. I had practically everything that the firms required - straight As, Oxbridge, scholarship, even a year's worth of experience as a paralegal - but faced nothing but rejection. Not even interviews.
Whereas a fellow student had 2 placements in his first 6 applications. The differences between us? I had the higher grades, he had the father who was a partner at a City firm and paid for his education...
The problem is that it's all about who you know. 71% of MC partners privately educated? When you take into account overseas partners, I'm betting that the number of state-educated partners can be counted on the finger of one chainsaw juggler's hand. Self-selection; the oligarchy wants to protect its own...
The law society is to blame
The law society and LPC providers see law graduates as cash cows. The people at the heart of this deceit need to be named and shamed. The training contract blocks access to the profession, and enables the law to be a closed shop. It's shocking that the law society has allowed such a system. You would expect it in a country like Nigeria and not the UK!
Although ABS will undoubtedly mean less demand for lawyers, that doesn't give the law society the right to continue to block access to the profession in such an artificial way. Even this work based scheme which is being piloted is a joke, as they intend to introduce it alongside the training contract, and this will result in a two tier profession. So again, this is another way of allowing the elite to dominate the niche areas of law.
LPC cources and Training Contracts
Having studied LPC at BPP as a mature student on part time basis and finished my LPC in 2008 - I have not even bothered to apply for any training contract, as I knew neither my age nor my state school back ground would ever give me access to any training contract. However, what it did for me was to make me wiser and given me a great career and opportunity in the commercial world to do my current job as a commercial manager. Therefore, being a qualified solicitor is not the only way up, utilising ones skills and life experience in the outside of the MC or the City is always an option and it is not a path only reserved for the elite. Therefore, education and knowledge is never wasted, it might be costly but earning potential is always there for the right individual.
Tim Child • Maybe it's just
Tim Child • Maybe it's just me (local comp-educated and not an Oxbridge graduate, for what it's worth) but this article feels like a non-story. 85.5% of lawyers (about 6 in every 7) come from state-funded schools - only 14.5% from private education. That's actually a far higher percentage from state schools than I would personally have expected, given the negative view that we so often hear in the media of the quality of our state education system.
As for the comment that most barristers and just over half of magic circle solicitors were Oxbridge-educated, why is it surprising that those who attended the universities which require the most stringent academic qualities and provide the most highly-regarded degrees end up recruited into the most prestigious legal jobs? (I do admit that I was surprised at the figure of 82% for the bar, however, as that doesn't seem to leave a lot of space for potential barristers from Britain's various other top legal faculties.)
Over the last decade alone, numbers of children in private education have risen by 7.5% (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8038903.stm), a point missing from the article. Is it, therefore, surprising if there are correspondingly more privately-educated people in our profession?
Lies, damned lies and statistics
Whilst this is an interesting and commendable piece, arbitrary comments like "the prolonged decline in academic standards in the state sector" and "the decline of state education" serve only to reinforce the prejudices criticised in the article. I acknowledge that one can bend statistics to any shape one chooses, but in 1997 1600 (out nearly 3500) State schools failed to achieve the minimum standard of 30% of pupils achieving at least five GCSEs at grades A* - C, whilst in 2009 that number had fallen to 270 schools. It is not a faultless statistic, but it is helpful in light of aforementioned sweeping comments and does make one question if the problem highlighted is more to do with inherent snobbery, self selection and elitism rather than a falling of standards in State education.
Yawn
More politically correct nonesense. I am sure we would have heard nothing about this great "objective" study if it had come up with the "wrong" result. Why not have done with the whole dumbing down process and guarantee all asylum seekers a training contract. Just think of all the "diversity" boxes that would tick - irrespective of whether or not they can speak the language/do the job!
Division in the law
I am surprised that no one has commented on the educational division between those of us who work in legal aid and those who don't. I am one of the last of a dying breed - a legal aid lawyer who went to a proper university and not a former polytechnic.
The training contract for private school
I totally agree “the training contract is a clever and calculated way of keeping the law for the elite” and allowing them to dominate the profession. I am not surprise why many ethnic minority and working class students, who were not privilege to attended private school, are extremely disadvantage. The training contract is no longer about talent and the practical skills needed for the profession. Today you need to attend private school, elite universities and come from the ruling class with strong connection within the legal profession.
The training contract is truly unnecessary. The sole purpose for it is to promote the interest of the elite, whiles the future state school lawyers have to jump twice as high to be on an equal footing. As if the state school lawyers have not done enough already after completing the LPC and building themselves colossal debts. Why should state school find it twice as hard to secure a training contract in comparison to private school solicitor to be?
training contract - get rid of it
The tragedy of the training contract system is that there are so many very competent, well educated paralegals who have the LPC, degree, good A levels etc. who would make excellent solicitors but will never get the chance to be a solicitor - they often tend to be Black and Asian.
Errrrmmmmm
Is this the same story as covered in:
Legal Week (http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/news/1897904/study-highlights-extent...),
The Lawyer (http://www.thelawyer.com/proportion-of-lawyers-educated-at-public-school...) and
The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article2807367.ece) ?
Because this piece seems very confused...
The other articles were talking about the UK's 250 elite public schools - whereas LSG seems to think this is talking about all the independent schools in the UK which teaching 7% of the nation’s population, as opposed to a tiny sliver of the super-rich.
Sloppy, LSG. Very sloppy.
Revolution is on the way, so get out whilst you can
This is like members of the Russian Bourgeoisie moaning about an aristocratic monopoly of power in 1916.
Within 5 years the bourgeoisie had been superseded by the Bolsheviks and the working class supposedly held sway.
Even if we opened the flood gates and ordered matters so that the only persons to be made solicitors would be the poor and the BME they would still be swept aside in the coming revolution where the large non-legal corporate bodies are going to take all profitable high street work and run it with uniformed paralegals.
What about the city you say? Well think about outsourcing. That is the future there.
Do something else before it is too late and before going somewhere else do some research about where you are going.
Quasi-Intellectual Snobbery
In the post by “the last of a dying breed - a legal aid lawyer who went to a proper university and not a former polytechnic” do we not see an example of the ingrained snobbery at the heart of this debate on education? Whilst laudable that the poster should want cultural diversity in legal aid, meritocratic access to educational establishments is not to be presumed and nor should an inherent superiority of non-vocational colleges.
I made partner three years after admission and have been a private-sector solicitor throughout my career, despite attending state school and a former polytechnic. I took what opportunities were available.
In the for-profit legal-aid sector I have witnessed the pressure to either ‘burn out’ or cut corners. As a costs Judge said of the work of one legal aid firm’s unqualified and unsupervised “solicitor” incompetently representing a disabled person suffering domestic violence - “What else can you expect on legal aid?”
The answer should be ‘Better than that’.
I support both my local law centre and Citizens’ Advice Bureau as I would rather help pro bono than get paid to participate in the charade of a ‘quality service’…but there again, I didn’t go to a ‘proper’ university, so what would I know?