Top firms told to stop cherry-picking from Oxbridge
Law firms are still recruiting from a narrow elite pool of graduates, the government’s independent reviewer on social mobility and child poverty reports today.
The Labour former minister Alan Milburn (pictured) said today that access to professions remains dominated by people from wealthy socio-economic backgrounds, which he described as ‘social engineering on a grand scale’. He said he does not accept the argument by top firms that their clients expect the best, and that this requires them to recruit from a handful of universities.
However Milburn compliments the legal profession for ‘starting to make real efforts’ to be more socially inclusive. Law ‘is on the right track but its progress is too slow,’ he said. ‘It needs to significantly accelerate.’
Milburn’s report Fair Access to Professional Careers, the first of three to the government, praises the Legal Services Board for making the collection of socio-economic data a priority. 'When you shine a spotlight people will be pretty horrified at what they see.’
It commends initiatives such national firm Addleshaw Goddard’s scheme to identify training contract entrants from less privileged backgrounds.
Milburn identifies four areas for the profession to consider further.
- Creating more clarity about the purpose of inclusion programmes. At present ‘so few schemes are fully evaluated that it is impossible to pinpoint the outcome’.
- Sustainability and evolution of programmes. Initiatives ‘must be more than a one-day burst of activity’.
- Putting social mobility at the heart of the sector and organisations. Employers should consider how to embed social mobility ‘into the fabric of their organisation’ rather than leaving it to ‘a small number of individuals who are genuinely comitted to change’.
- Selecting the workforce from the widest possible pool. The report says that some firms told them that clients expect them to recruit from a few top universities. ‘We do not accept this as an argument,’ it says. ‘We have heard from universities that they cannot persuade law firms to visit or undertake outreach. There are 115 universities in the country and law firms should recruit from as wide an academic pool as possible.’
Overall, Milburn condemned the ‘informal economy’ of internships and work experience placements, especially when these replace paid jobs or are an essential pre-requisite to them. He called for employers to select interns transparently and pay them at least expenses and preferably a wage.
Milburn’s team examined four professions: law, medicine, the senior civil service and the media, His harshest judgement was on the journalism, which ‘does not seem to take the issue of fair access seriously’.
The LSB's chief executive Chris Kenny said: 'We welcome today’s report and in particular the focus on issues around progression and retention that have an impact throughout a lawyer’s career. All available data suggests that these are the areas where significant progress has yet to be made in the legal profession. The report also emphasises the importance of data collection and evaluation in driving progress, where the LSB has provided decisive leadership to the approved regulators.'
He said the board agrees with the report’s assessment that progress in the legal profession must be accelerated and that it would publish tomorrow its assessment of the approved regulators' action plans for improving data collection and transparency around diversity and social mobility in the legal sector. 'These assessments are broadly in line with [Milburn's] judgement that, although headway is being made, significant progress is still required.’
Law Society president John Wotton said: 'The Law Society strongly supports efforts to increase social mobility - the profession must have access to the best talent, irrespective of social background. That is why we and our members have been working hard for so long on this issue. Our ambition is clear, we want the solicitor's profession to be widely recognised as a meritocracy where the sole criteria for entry and advancement are integrity, ability and hard work. That is already the case for most of our leading practices. The efforts made by the solicitor's profession have been properly recognised by Alan Milburn, but we agree that there is further to go.'
He said the Law Society 'stands ready to work with other interested bodies to address the issues Alan Milburn has raised'.
- Read Ed Reyes's blog on the report
Comments
Gross Hypocrisy
Utterly, utterly hypocritical. It was his government who introduced the concept of ABSs which will destroy the careers of thousands of potential lawyers from poor backgrounds and mire them in debt. It was his government which encouraged the Law Society Council to hand over all powers to the SRA who have recently scrapped the trainee minimum salary. The result of New Labour's meddling will be a profession reserved for the children of the very wealthy. They will be serviced by an army of uniformed and badly paid paralegals. These people will come from Milburn's deprived masses. You couldn't make this up. I am sick of the rank hypocrisy of all recent governments. They spout diversity and social mobility when it is as clear as day that social mobility is being significantly retarded to allow for the old elite and the lucky few who were allowed to join in the 60s and 70s to retain privileged positions in the new world where our country will become a third world basket case.
Absolutely right!
Absolutely right!
Right label
I would agree in a legal world which is so loud about diversity and fairness you got people looking at a plank of paper as opposed to practical skills and individual reasoning. There are other elements shaping a person in addition to something obtained through education and they include commitment, determination, capacity to organise oneself, etc. Is someone studying full time on funds received from his parents at University A which has a better reputation a better trainee than someone studying at University B which is not in the top 5 universities while funding own studies or having to repay own studies and even maybe while working to sustain himself? Which one of them is likely to be more pragmatic? Which one of them is likely to be more realistic? Which one of them is likely to be able to produce more and at a faster rate by being more organised thus driving a more productive enterprise?
From the beginning, this time with feeling
The sad fact is the state school sector fails many of our children. Many bright pupils are left without the intellectual and emotional tools when they leave secondary education to succeed.
Only when this is properly addressed, rather than simply fudging the issue, will we obtain a true meritocracy.
This is applicable to law, medicine, the civil service and a plethora of other industries
Reality
The reality is that top firms know exactly what they are getting from Oxford and Cambridge graduates. They have continued to rub shoulders with each other and have enjoyed a long-lasting friendship and the 'old boys' network is not a myth. Firms like those kind of students representing them and they feel like the more 'Oxbridge' - the more prestige - the more intellectual - the more wealthy and thus, the more value they are adding into their firms. It seems almost like the graduate recruitment teams are having such a difficulty in distinguishing between candidates that they 'take the easier option'. The frustrating thing is the constant hypocrisy from the government as indicated (supra) which gives the impression that 'equality matters'. We don't live in a meritocracy and there have been countless surveys which have elucidated statistics showing that over 73% of top graduates come from affluent backgrounds. The rise in tuition fees; the difficulty obtaining legal work experience; the scandal of the LPC fees (why are they so much?) and above all 'the appalling economy and high unemployment rate' in the country. Have the barriers to enter the profession ever been higher? Even now, with one attending a 'red brick university' ; achieving a 2:1 law degree ; gaining numerous work experience placements; fulfilling extra curriculum positions of responsibility at University; even with all of this prerequisite criteria, one cannot expect to be welcomed in with 'open arms'. The reality is that the legal profession is an elitist profession and anyone who achieves 3 A's at A-level, a 2:1 degree and shows a real commitment to the profession, in my opinion deserves an opportunity. The reality is these opportunities tend to fall to Oxbridge students but does that not highlight a problem in the legal recruiting system? All law students want the same thing - if they work hard - and you know they do - and achieve the right results - they want an opportunity to practice doing the best work. However, you can see the paradoxical problem when you look at who is running the country. The legal profession, particularly in London, is like the government - it is run by 'posh boys' who have no idea what the real world is like and they will continue to fish from their prestigious pond for as long as they are able to. I rub shoulders daily with law students whose parents are practically millionaires - they have all the best equipment - they go to tropical destinations to do their revision - they have a 'endless source of income from their parents and all they have to do is study. Compare that with a student, who is working two jobs ,to fund his studies and his family, still heavily involved within the law societies and has come from poverty. Who deserves the opportunity to sit before a partner and profess his love for the law? Surely just the sheer 'eye of the tiger' would resonate with a partner more ? The reality is that money talks. The government should stop talking the talk and start walking the walk.
Probably would have agreed if
Probably would have agreed if this was readable. Try paragraphs next time.
@Owen: "The reality is that
@Owen:
"The reality is that the legal profession is an elitist profession and anyone who achieves 3 A's at A-level, a 2:1 degree and shows a real commitment to the profession, in my opinion deserves an opportunity."
It is an elitist profession in the sense that firms can insist on the very best applicants, and are, in that sense, utterly meritocratic. Realistically, 3 As and a 2:1 is no longer particularly elite, and certainly doesn't make you "deserving" of an opportunity. Why not get a first?
There's no reason firms should apologise for their narrow entry requirements, the myriad failures of rubbish schooling, nor the shallow pool of universities from which they recruit. Hundreds upon thousands of applications for each place mean that it's a buyer's market. And if you're not good enough, tough.
Why Milburn?
It's difficult to understand why Alan Milburn was chosen for the job of an "independent reviewer on social mobility and child poverty".
I happen to have a lot of time for him, but as a former Labour MP he cannot remotely be considered a neutral in matters such as this. He is clearly a political figure with his own agenda.
And with regard to the conclusions of the report the `top' firms are private organisations, and as such they should be able to hire exactly who they want. They are hiring people to make money for them, and if they deem a particular set of characteristics to be desirable who has the right to tell them to hire people without those characteristics?
It's an unfortunate fact of life that most people prefer mixing with `PLU' - `people like us'. Wealthy private clients and many directors of FTSE100 companies will have a public school / Oxbridge background, and will therefore feel more comfortable with such people than they would with some chap from the local comp, no matter how good a lawyer he may be. In any case, a lot of the work done by these firms isn't that difficult and doesn't need someone with a first.
Winning clients at this level is at least as much about schmoozing as it is about pure merit, so the ability to mix easily with people from this privileged background is at least as important as technical ability. There are any number of clever lawyers around, so given the choice between someone who's from the same background and who shares common interests and someone who isn't it's a no brainer which one will be chosen.
This type of nepotism is simply human nature, and exists in every society of every poitical hue. It doesn't mean that good lawyers from working class backgrounds can't get very well paid jobs and make it as equity partners, it just means they can't get them with certain firms - so what! Nobody has a right to work for any particular firm.
In any case, ability will out. If someone is genuinely a star lawyer who can make money and attract good clients the magic circle firms will be only too happy to recruit him once he's proved himself elsewhere, whatever his background.
I am a trainee, I went to
I am a trainee, I went to state school and a red brick university, undertook the required myriad of extra curricular activities, worked hard at university and at law school, but it was not until I had undertaken a couple of years work in the real world that I felt equipped to enter the profession a proper.
It took those few extra years work for me to gain some of the confidence and other "work" skills which seem to come as second nature to those who are privately educated. I noticed the difference between state school and privately educated individuals at university and now in the work place, I don't think that law firms should be expected to do anything other than choose who they feel is the best candidate for the position, and often at trainee age there is a marked difference between those who attended state school and a red brick and those who attended private school and ox-bridge.
I do think that to some extent the state school system is failing our brightest and is to blame for this problem in the legal proffession. However I have worked hard and now largely due to my work experience post university I am a well valued trainee who is often praised for a commercial and "can do" attitude. I may not have had the self belief at 20 to tell a recruiter that I would be a great lawyer like some of my privately educated counterparts, but a few years on I know that I will make a well rounded addition to the profession.