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There is an important point that people are missing here. The market for solicitors is saturated. A decision was taken by the Law Society to first tighten like crazy on the numbers entering the profession (destroying the legal careers of many thousands in the process) and then to let pretty well everybody in. I, personally, think that neither position is correct, but there were some positive outcomes for that short period of time when the Law Society barrelled down hard on the numbers entering the profession.

The exams at that time were externally set, properly invigilated, and anonymously marked. Each exam script had a candidate number, not a candidate name. Those who passed those exams had a guaranteed job, and, at least until the Law Society opened the taps, a guaranteed route onward and upward.

If you saturate the market with people all having more or less the same grades and smiling faces, people doing the interviewing will, of course, pick people who are like them. That is just human nature.

I don't know about the United States, but in England & Wales, the problem, such as it is, was, I think, created by the Law Society, maybe entirely inadvertently, but that is the organisation I would blame, and it is their responsibility to sort out what I consider an equal opportunities mess ... and not via targets or quotas or just plain wishful thinking, but by looking again at those externally set, properly invigilated, and anonymously marked exams and learning from past mistakes.

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