There is now one solicitor for every 565 people in England and Wales. Neil Rose looks at how the profession has grown since its post-war low.


The post-war period was a time of change for the solicitors’ profession. Casualties in the Second World War had seen the number of practitioners drop to around 13,000, the lowest figure since the 1880s. But as it entered the 1950s, the profession was starting to grow once more and lay the foundations of what we know today, shaking off a Dickensian image that still saw the 6pm routine at some firms of clerks taking the post on a silver tray to the senior partner’s club for signing.


Fortunately, there were also plenty of potential clients for each solicitor. By 1951, there were 17,396 practising solicitors, equating to one for every 2,515 residents in England and Wales.


This figure has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been dropping steadily through the decades. According to the latest Law Society annual statistical report (ASR), there were a record 92,752 practising solicitors as at 31 July 2003, a 4.2% rise on the year before and in line with the annual trend over the past 30 years. This equates to around 565 people per solicitor – the competition is getting a lot fiercer.


It is set to get harder still if the profession continues on the trend since the 1970s of growing by 50% every decade. Using population projections from the Office of National Statistics, this means 418 people per solicitor in 2011, 290 in 2021 and just 236 by 2026. At that rate, there is a slightly scary long-term future scenario in which every person in the country will have their own exclusive solicitor.


The other interesting demographic fact to come out of the ASR is that there is for the first time an exact correlation between the proportion of ethnic minority solicitors in the practising profession, and the proportion of ethnic minority people generally in the wider population. Both are at 7.9%, with the solicitors’ figure up from 7% in 2002. Around one in six newly qualifieds in 2003 was from an ethnic minority.


Some 8.8% of solicitors on the roll were from ethnic minorities, up from 8.1%. Significantly more ethnic minority solicitors were not practising (28.1%) than the profession as a whole (20.1%). In total, the number of solicitors on the roll rose 2.4% to 116,100.


This demographic parity may well be short lived, as the number of ethnic minority solicitors is set only to keep growing. The ASR shows that last year a record 25.5% of undergraduate law students were from ethnic minorities, as were 22.1% of postgraduate law students and 17.9% of trainees.


The march of women solicitors continues unabated; for the first time, they account for more than 40% of solicitors on the roll. The figure is an ever-increasing 39.7% for practising solicitors. Some 56.8% of solicitors admitted to the roll in 2002/03 were women, up from 51.1% a decade before.


The ASR says that in that decade, the total number of solicitors with practising certificates has grown by 51.2%; however, over this period the number of women has increased 117.5%, compared with just a 26% increase for men. At that rate, it will be less than ten years before women are in the majority.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, women are already in the majority at the younger end of the profession, making up 57% of practising solicitors aged 30 or younger. By contrast, 65% of those in their 40s are men. The average age of male solicitors is 43.2 years, compared with 36.3 for women.


This all goes some way – but not all the way – to explaining why 50.1% of men are partners, compared to just 22.9% of women. This in turn helps account for the fact that women are more likely to work outside private practice, where traditional attitudes are less entrenched.


Solicitors from ethnic minorities are similarly less likely to be partners than white Europeans – 24.3% against 41.4%. ‘This partly reflects the fact that solicitors from the ethnic minorities have only recently been entering the profession in numbers,’ the report says. A higher proportion of ethnic minority solicitors (7.9%) are sole practitioners, when compared with white Europeans (5.4%).


There has been a small rise in the number of organisations employing solicitors, with 13,893 in England and Wales and a further 1,319 elsewhere. However, this was not brought about by private practice, and the proportion of practising solicitors now working outside private practice has risen to 21.8%. The slow decline in the number of law firms and offices continued last year – there were 9,198 firms and 12,708 offices in total, including branches, representing drops of around 9% since 1997.


This breaks down into 4,117 sole practitioners, 3,668 firms of two to four partners, 911 firms of five to ten partners, 358 firms of 11-25 partners, 106 firms of 26-80 partners, and 38 firms of 81 or more partners. That last category, which makes up just 0.4% of firms, employs almost 22% of all private practice solicitors.


The ASR does provide an indication that partner promotions fell as market conditions worsened in 2002/03. While the number of solicitors in private practice grew 2.8%, the proportion of partners, including sole practitioners, fell from 47.3% to 45.6%. This is also reflected by an across-the-board increase in firms’ gearing, or the number of admitted staff per principal, which now ranges from 1.5 at firms with sole principals to 3.3 at the largest practices.


For those looking to the longer term, there is little sign that the supply of would-be solicitors will diminish, although there was a drop in the number of students applying for, and being accepted on, undergraduate law courses. There were 15,637 UK applicants for law degrees in 2002, of whom 10,272 were accepted, falls of 9.5% and 7.3% respectively on 2001 – however, 2001 was something of a high point.


Given recent trends at all levels of the profession, perhaps more surprising was the finding that there was also a fall in the proportion of female law students accepted in 2002, 62% from 63.4% in 2001.


Nonetheless, the women finishing university maintained their lead over men academically, with a higher proportion graduating with a first or upper second class than their male colleagues. Some 54.8% of all students in 2002 received one of the two top grades, up from 51.1%.


This did not carry on to the postgraduate world, where the proportion of students passing the legal practice course (LPC) stayed almost static at 79.4%. More than a quarter passed with distinction.


Although there continues to be an over-supply of LPC places, the numbers continue to rise, with 7,859 full-time places (up 2.1%) in 2003/04 and 1,700 part-time places (up 14.4%) – last year, some 7,377 students were enrolled on the LPC (up 3.3%).


Perhaps fortunately, there were more training contracts available in 2003 than ever before – 5,650, an increase of almost 5% and not far below the number of students passing the LPC. A decade before, in the teeth of the recession, there were just 3,681 training contracts. Last year also saw the highest proportion of female trainees recorded (62.7%). Back in 1992-3, it was 54.4%.


But this trend is not reflected at the largest firms. A third of all trainees work in the 38 firms of 81 or more partners, and the report shows that male trainees ‘were much more likely than female trainees to be placed’ in those firms – the proportions were 36.1% and 31% respectively. The same trend, though smaller, could be seen in firms of 26-80 partners.


This may explain in part why male trainees had a higher average starting salary than their female equivalents -– £20,657 as opposed to £19,195. This pay gap has long been well established, and increased over the year as male salaries went up further.


The overall average trainee starting salary was £19,748, substantially more than the Law Society minimum salary. However, some 20% of trainees were paid at or below the minimum, which for 2002/03 was £14,600 in central London and £13,000 elsewhere. The majority of trainees in Wales (61.2%) and the north-east (52.5%) were paid at or below the minimum.

 So that is the legal profession of 2003. A lot different from that of 1953, without doubt, and if these trends continue, a lot different from that of 2053 as well.