Your feature about social mobility underplayed what can be the biggest barrier for applicants to the law – money (see [2009] Gazette, 20 August, 8).

The starting point will be the costs of a first degree. If it is not in law, then the student has to take and pass the graduate diploma in law. All candidates must then take and pass the legal practice course. Finally they must live on a trainee’s salary for two further years before entering practice, often at a salary barely higher than they trained at. They have to be prepared to take the very real risk that they will not be offered a training contract at the end of their LPC, or employment at the end of their training contract.

The total cost of legal education will rarely be less than £20,000 and often more. Of that sum, £10,000 will have gone to finance the LPC alone.

It stands to reason that it is going to be much easier for students from middle-class families, who are more likely to get parental support, to incur these costs than those from poorer backgrounds, including the significant number who will be supported by a single parent.

Currently, the support available towards postgraduate stage costs is minimal. Unless this or a future government tackles the financial barrier to entry to the legal profession it will inevitably remain largely the domain of the well-off.

Steve Willey, East Marton, Skipton, Yorkshire