A government-commissioned report that lays bare the privileged background of most lawyers shows that class distinction still dominates the sector.

The final report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, chaired by former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, shows that the law remains one of the most socially exclusive professions and that mobility is actually diminishing. Top solicitors and barristers are typically drawn from middle-income families that are up to £800 a week better off than the average. Just over 50% of solicitors and barristers were educated independently, compared with 7% of the population.

Alluding to the ‘broad range’ of initiatives under way to widen access to the solicitors profession, including the Law Society’s Diversity Charter, Society president Paul Marsh commented: ‘Social mobility data is not widely collected because there is no agreed standard of measurement. One of the Society’s recommendations in our submission was a cross-profession protocol for collection of such data to support effective benchmarking.’