Firms must work together to reverse declining social mobility, Janet Legrand, senior partner and chairman of the board at international firm DLA Piper said this week.

Legrand was speaking on the second anniversary of the PRIME work experience programme, which aims to provide 2,500 places to schoolchildren from socially deprived backgrounds.  

The PRIMEscheme offers 1,800 placements across a number of firms, including DLA Piper. The initiative aims is to provide 2,500 work experience places across the country by 2015.Legrand said it demonstrates a public commitment to improving social mobility. ‘It’s not something law firms often do, but it’s powerful if we can do something together as a profession,’ she said.

‘Lack of diversity is a problem, which is getting worse not better. A lot of the leaders of firms today are from working-class backgrounds,’ she said, ‘but that sense of aspiring and achieving is happening less, which is a systemic issue.’

She said a lack of representation was bad for firms’ clients. ‘If our gene pool is getting smaller we are losing out on ‘different and diverse backgrounds and experience’.