The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality last week slammed the 'catastrophic' and 'preposterous' lack of diversity in City law firms and called on firms to 'wake up' to trainees who did not graduate from Oxford or Cambridge.

Trevor Phillips said firms must monitor the ethnic background and gender of their lawyers, as only then will they be able to see whether their recruitment and other policies are having a negative impact on certain groups - and warned that the commission could take action if law firms do not translate words into action.


Speaking to the Gazette at the Law Society's Race Equality Awards ceremony, he said: 'A lot of the leading firms now say that they care about diversity, and I do not sneer at the fact that they say it. Some will just say it for the firm's sake but a lot of them can see the benefits of diversity and the energy it brings.


'But there are still fundamental blockages in the profession. The conservatism in the profession is resulting in bias. Partners think they [already] know what a good lawyer looks like, and we must shake them out of that presumption.'


He went on: 'If firms are focusing disproportionately on Oxbridge, then they need to wake up. You will get trainees from King's College London, York, Manchester and Birmingham who are just as good as those from Oxford or Cambridge.


'Firms must start looking at the person in front of them. Instead of thinking that a person does not fit into the template, they should think about what a 21st century law firm really needs.'


He added that ethnic monitoring is an essential part of the process. 'It is only when you start to put together the numbers over a period of time that you begin to see that you may be unwittingly discriminating against some groups.'


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