To be surprised how posh most lawyers are?

I'm my previous post my mention of salaries was based on private sector high street law firms, where (outside of the minority who work for City law firms) salaries in and outside London are around the same. So, taking into account house prices, lawyers are on average worse off in London.

As a different example, with a higher salary, here's the tiny difference between London and outside London. That extra £2,906 a year in no way compensates for the extortionate London house prices.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/about-us/working-us/vacancy-lawyer

London Salary: £62,906 / Outside London: £60,711.

Eh?

They were fine. Not amazing, but I worked my arse off and demonstrated maturity, determination and good commercial awareness.

You obviously weren't comparing like for like with salaries.

The City law firms in London (who also have regional offices outside London with similar salaries) artificially inflate the average London lawyer salary.

Only a minority of London lawyers work for the City firms.

Most work for high street firms - with average salaries the same as the figure you quoted for the Midlands. And with higher house prices in London, the average lawyer would be better off in the Midlands.

Area of law makes a difference to salary but that's true wherever in the UK the lawyer is based.

@CraftyNavySeal your comment is right re social mobility one generation on; I agree.

So you're in a magic circle sort of firm? You're meant to be bright, why are you surprised?

Go to a mid range firm in the provinces and the lawyers won't be all posh.

@OdeToBarney did you have good academics?

You are so right. In my department of probably 50 professionals (and we are not even that well-paid) I can only think of around 5 people whose parents were in manual occupations. I’ve been there literally decades so have institutional knowledge. The recruitment pipeline is changing in terms of ethnic diversity but not much in terms of socio economic background.

It's pretty much impossible to graduate from Cambridge with a Law degree and be surprised by such a thing. :) Also, do you really have time at work to discuss your family trees? Because I find this highly unlikely.

This. I saw a programme about it a while ago. If you don’t know someone with influence, you’re stuck.

This couldn't be more different to me.

Crap state school. Average ex-poly uni via a period of working in financial services (not in London). Third in my large family to go to university. Paid my own LPC fees, got a training contract at a magic circle firm. Live in a not posh part of South London and have one child. There are plenty of people out there like me, and I see more coming up through the ranks since the introduction of the SQE. The profession is changing and the lawyers you know are absolutely not the norm anymore.

Twenty years ago I ran shitscared from my (Russell Group) uni careers fair after speaking to mega posh person after mega posh person representing law firms. Until that point I was really interested in pursuing a legal career, although my bachelor's degree was in something else.
I was the first in my family to go to uni too and thought there'd be lots like me in the various professions. How wrong was I.
Twenty years on - and not in a legal career - I still feel like the outlier in terms of background. When peers are off on six month sabbaticals or buying BTL properties or simply fitting right in at some event I remember that it's because they inherited a fuckton/have always mixed in these circles/don't worry about failure.
Class is the last, great, divide in this country and the struggle ordinary, working class, kids face to get to the top is indescribable.
Keep working hard and soon your resilience and determination will help you through.

I mean, this has been the status quo for decades. It’s horribly unfair but you’d have to have been living under a rock not to notice this prior. It’s sociology 101.

We all have to start somewhere.x1@

Utter boileaux. My DH did and 35+ years later still has a Yorkshire accent, albeit fainter than it was then. Grandfather a miner, father an engineer, mother a teacher. He went to a comp before Oxford.

It depends in where you live and the size and type of firm. Small local firms near us in a rural area are very different to London firms and there are a mixture of backgrounds.

Average solicitor salaries are very different too - £88k in London and £46k in the Midlands.

It's not that people from certain backgrounds are "stupid", not at all - it's that we aren't brought up with expectations to "aim higher"

sadly it’s not even this. It’s that many in positions of seniority don’t want working class people to succeed. Boys club innit. If they have to let the women in, at least make sure they’re posh

It’s a middle class career, same as the field iI’m in. (psychology) so I feel your pain. It was a culture shock for me.

It's not that people from certain backgrounds are "stupid", not at all - it's that we aren't brought up with expectations to "aim higher".

“I’m sure most people can imagine the classic ‘well-spoken, privately educated, pinstriped-suit-wearing doctor’ and although improving the social diversity of the medical workforce has been a focus for the government over the past ten years, data suggests little has changed. The 2012 government report Fair access to professional careers showed medicine had made little progress in widening access to those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and appeared to have little interest in doing so. In 2015 the BMA highlighted that although there was increasing diversity in gender, ethnicity and age, there continued to be minimal improvement in social diversity. A year later the Social Mobility Commission found that only 4 per cent of doctors came from working class backgrounds, behind other groups considered to be ones of privilege, such as lawyers and journalists at 6 and 11 per cent respectively.”

Try working in legal aid. There are some incredibly good lawyers working in those firms for a pittance, from all sorts of backgrounds.

@Veebee89 what is not true?

This is just not true. I’m a surgeon and so is my DH. We both went to comps, I grew up in a working class town in the north west, DH in a working class town in Yorkshire. Doctors are probably one of the most diverse professions in terms of sex, ethnicity and social class.

There are some “posh” privately educated people in medicine of course but certainly not the majority.

I never felt out of place at med school or at any stage during my training and you certainly don’t need to hide your background or adopt certain behaviours to appear polished like you seem to have to in law. Regional accents are totally normal and I think doctors at all levels are used to mixing with people from different class backgrounds. Don’t forget as surgeons most of our day is spent with theatre assistants, nurses and patients, not other consultants, and those people are from all walks of life.

There is a challenge with getting more women into surgery but that’s a whole other topic!

A law degree is no more expensive than any other degree. The post-degree course you need to undertake can be expensive but those that have training contracts lined up at “top firms” will largely be sponsored through it.

OP I would say that big firms in the City/London are disproportionately full of posh people with privileged backgrounds and private educations. If you’re looking for a more representative mix of colleagues then regional firms - even the big ones - would be a better choice.

Obviously not every lawyer is a MC partner on 2m a year but reading the OP I think we can make a reasonable guess that she isn’t talking about working in a high street firm earning 50k a yr…