Helping to take stock at her mother’s hair salon in south-east London gave Danita Antwi a taste for business, which is one of the reasons she wanted to become a corporate lawyer.
However, when Antwi finished school, she decided not to follow the traditional route of a full-time university degree followed by a two-year internship (a rotating position that allows trainee lawyers to gain the necessary qualifications). Instead, she opted to apply for a solicitor internship at UK law firm Linklaters.
“I liked the idea of going straight into the workplace, where you face real deadlines all the time,” says Antwi, now 20.[It also] “That meant I was able to experience more areas of practice. You’re not tied to the four seats you get with a training contract.”
Antwi is one of eight apprentices out of 900 applicants who started at Linklaters last year, when the firm took on its first cohort under the programme. And the elite UK firm is one of a number of top firms taking steps to break new ground in the field of law, in the hope that it will also improve social mobility in a profession where those from wealthier backgrounds have long dominated.
In the UK, 64 percent of in-laws come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, according to a 2019 study. Sutton Trust Reporta social mobility charity.
“He [legal] “The sector remains one of the least socioeconomically diverse in the country, with barristers, solicitors and judges disproportionately coming from the same few schools and universities,” says Katy Hampshire, programme director at Sutton Trust.
“The legal sector can gain a lot by levelling the playing field for those from less-privileged backgrounds who wish to pursue a career in law,” she says.
The first modern solicitor apprenticeship schemes began in 2016. They offer school leavers an alternative route into the sector through a six-year work-study programme that allows them to earn money while gaining a law degree and becoming qualified. Rather than paying tens of thousands of pounds to go to university, the scheme offers apprentices an immediate salary.
At Linklaters, apprentices receive £28,000 in their first year, plus a £3,000 joining bonus.
But while there were some who embraced the internship program early on, most top-tier law firms were slower to get on board. They were already inundated with applications from some of the best and brightest across the country, and there was little incentive to change.
That began to change last year when Linklaters joined forces with a group of major companies to launch City Century, bringing together some of the capital’s most elite businesses to deliver the programme and increase its appeal. More than 50 companies have signed up and around 150 apprenticeships will be offered each year.
“Trainees are often the best in the most difficult situations,” says Patrick McCann, Linklaters’ training director. “I refer to them as the ‘Mozarts of their schools’. They are special. They are that one kid in the year 200.”
The move is as much about business as it is about altruism. When Slaughter and May, another British firm that is also part of the “magic circle,” analyzed its staff data a few years ago, management found that socioeconomic background had no bearing on success. So last year, Slaughters set a target of increasing the number of employees from disadvantaged backgrounds: from 10% of lawyers to 15% by 2033; and from 19% of employees overall to 25%.
“One of the really interesting facts that [we] “What we found was that when people who came as lawyers from a lower socioeconomic background did just as well as everyone else,” explains Deborah Finkler, managing partner at Slaughters.
“What I wanted was for there to be as much coverage of this as possible. [the firm’s targets] “When a 15-year-old living in Sunderland Googled ‘law firms’… they saw that these kinds of initiatives existed and that it was something they could do,” she says.
However, aspiring apprentices living further afield who want to join elite firms, which typically only have offices in London, still struggle. It is potentially much harder for an 18-year-old from Yorkshire, for example, to leave home and support themselves than for someone who already lives in or near the capital.
Efforts in the industry are not However, the job offer is limited to school or college leavers. Firms such as Pinsent Masons and Dentons have also been looking at ways to broaden the career paths of paralegals. In 2022, Dentons started a programme offering some of its paralegals the opportunity to qualify as a solicitor. The firm is in its third cohort and has so far awarded three associate positions to qualified paralegals.
“In some cases, paralegals have struggled to secure a training contract for a variety of reasons,” says Nicholas Cole, Dentons’ UK regional resourcing director. “We know that having had them in the industry for a while, they are proven, respected and recognised individuals, unlike external recruiters.”
Pinsent Masons has reorganised its paralegals into a core team under its resourcing brand, Vario, and created new management roles and promotion opportunities.
Starting salaries start at £20,000 or more and senior delivery managers can earn around £65,000.
The profession also hopes that the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination (a set of exams that has replaced the long-used Legal Practice Course and allows a wider range of work experience to count towards qualification) will help make a legal career more accessible.
Some in-house legal teams are also doing their part. Last year, Deutsche Bank hired four trainees, the first in about 15 years.
“We see social mobility, among other characteristics, that may not be considered traditional for lawyers practising in the private sector or in investment banks,” says Patricia Anyaegbuna, a senior advisor at Deutsche Bank in London. “But this diverse perspective brings new perspectives. This was also key in our recent hiring of trainees for the first time in over a decade,” explains Anyaegbuna.
Private schools give preference to members
A key indicator of social mobility is the educational attainment of lawyers. And by that measure, the profession has a long way to go. A survey of UK-based firms by the legal website Law.com found that only one firm, Womble Bond Dickinson, reported that more than half of its partners had been educated at a state school. Of the more elite UK-founded firms, A&O Shearman in London had the most state-educated partners, at 25 per cent. By contrast, 93 per cent of the UK population as a whole is educated at state schools.
“The qualifications and work experience required for a career in law, and the costs associated with them, often act as a barrier for many students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds,” says Katy Hampshire, programme director at Sutton Trust.
Among the 39 (of 57) companies that disclosed diversity data for the survey, associates and interns were more likely to have attended fee-paying schools, a trend that suggests the situation is not improving.
At the other end of the scale, the firms with the highest number of state-trained lawyers at most levels of their firms (after Womble Bond Dickinson) were Gowling WLG and Mills & Reeve. Shoosmiths, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard also performed better than most on this measure.