I very much agree with Lucinda Moule’s article. I am from a working class background and my school did not push me in the same way that my brother (who went to a boys’ grammar school) and my mother who went to an ‘old style’ grammar school after passing her 11+, were pushed.

I successfully qualified as a solicitor due largely to the encouragement of my parents. My school (a local church school) was so busy dealing with the children who did not want to learn that often it had no time to inspire and nurture the ones who wanted to learn.

In fact my careers teacher positively discouraged me from a career in law as they thought I might struggle with it. Inspiring people at grass roots is the key to encouraging greater diversity within the legal profession across the classes and could serve as a much-needed antidote to the ‘snobbish’ culture that still very much exists.

Rachael Waring, solicitor, Bury, Lancashire