To be surprised how posh most lawyers are?

[eggtat]

I grew up in a mining area in the north east. Not a poor background but parents never had much money. I was the clever kid in school, worked my socks off and got a law degree from cambridge. Then moved to London for work.

I thought that law firms would be full of people like me and some posh people. In my office I’d say a an overwhelming majority of people come from what I’d consider a posh background - parents who are professors, diplomats, barristers, partners at law firms, senior accountants etc.

People who grew up privileged, good private schools, academic households, then onto a top uni.

I’d say that was a fair assessment yes. Social mobility is a thing but working class parents having a lawyer kid will be rarer than middle class.

As that’s what you’re saying isn’t it, most of them had middle class upbringings.

what did your parents do?

I wouldn’t want my children to be lawyers. I think we’re lawyered out as a country.

I don’t entirely disagree but I think it depends a little bit on the law firm.

Law degrees are quite expensive, so this sis not surprising. Especially in top law firms.

I know this was one case but on the jury I was amused by the class situation in the court room

Jury very mixed
Police every day
Prosecutor slightly more MC
Defence barrister more so
Judge at the top of poshness

I loved the case, and I know it may differ but I wondered how much it was replicated through courts

Given how hard it is to get a training contract and often the need to do work experience/poorly paid vacation schemes, I think law is heading more and more that way. At least when it comes to the big firms.

You did your law degree at Cambridge. (As did I). Are you saying that you consider your London (I assume City?) firm to be less diverse than your cohort at Cambridge?

My experience was that the REALLY posh ones all went to the Bar. Partly because they could afford to pay for Bar school whereas solicitor firms would fund the LPC.

I found that my first Magic Circle firm had a very similar trainee demographic to my fellow law students in my college but it wasn’t overwhelmingly private school/ father “something in the city”. I was first in my family to go to university, went to state school but my parents were actually quite middle class- my Dad was a journalist, my Mum worked in a University managing the student accommodation.

I moved later to a couple of top 30 City firms and found those more socially diverse. I’m still in one of those firms now but I’m older so none of my peers really talk about what their parents do/did as most are retired or dead! (I don’t talk to young associates and trainees about their parents as that would be weird.) We try to recruit from a wide pool of social backgrounds.

I think that’s valid, when you go high st you probably have a much wider demographic, lower paid/cost lawyers, likely less prestigious unis, lower class degree achievements.

but when you get to magic circle or some of the top global firms you will experience a lot of middle class lawyers who went Russel group /oxbridge,and achieved a first.

This was me when I went to university and learned how the other half lived.

I do agree to an extent but I see that it's changing. The new generation coming in at paralegal level, so straight from uni, have much more diverse backgrounds than the old hands.

I’m really surprised that you have a law degree from Cambridge and use the word posh.

I've been in city law firms (MC and now US) for 25 years and it is definitely getting posher. When I started about 25% of my trainee cohort, including me, were state school educated and many of us had regional accents. Now if I come across a trainee with a British regional accent I take notice and many more of them are from money. Our firm is now much more diverse in every sense except class/socio-economic. There are overwhelming numbers of Singaporean, Hong kong and Indian lawyers (some educated in England) but mostly from wealthy backgrounds in those countries. Even a few oligarch-kids but the British lawyers are more and more privately educated and upper middle class. More women than there used to be (although still not nearly enough in the really powerful roles). But what I'm noticing through graduate recruitment the last few years is that 'normal' British kids from backgrounds like mine (Midlands comp, first in family to go to university) have nothing like enough polish to get through the hiring process against kids who have been mixing with people like our lawyers/clients all of their lives. I really want them to succeed but even if we get some bright kids through the door they quite often are quickly demoralised by the competitive ruthlessness of the whole thing. I am torn between giving them a chance (and risking them burning out quickly) and thinking they would be better off at a smaller firm with less ambitious people. Of course ymmv and my firm is a bit notorious for being cutthroat but I think it is a depressing trend more widely..

Why?

Why? They don’t beat it out them to stop using the word.

There was a documentary on this recently, about how difficult it is for working class kids to get into law. Took 3 graduates with first class degrees from good unis but they couldn't get a placement (or whatever it is called, pretty much an apprenticeship after uni). Apparently there are few placements available so it comes down to who you know to get one. There were also internships available, but working class kids couldn't support themselves and pay their expenses whilst doing it.

Essentially you needed well connected parents who were able to give you financial support.

It was depressing.

To do the vac schemes you need to not be working somewhere else during the summer and you need to be able to commute to London (although they do pay a bit).

This may start to change now with the apprentice route to qualification - many straight out of A levels and working their way from the bottom up.

I heard an interesting theory - social mobility appears to have have stopped (eg. people in law seem to be getting posher) because most of the people who are able to take advantage of it already have and it’s their children who are now considered “posh”. The middle class has got much bigger.

I can definitely see it in my own family. My grandparents were farmers from rural Ireland who came to London for work. My aunt went to grammar school, became a lawyer and sends her son to private school. My mum worked for the council but could afford property in what later became a “naice” part of north London so I effectively grew up “posh”.

So a lot of current posh seeming people are just the result of the previous generation of social mobility.

Law is one industry which is not particularly diverse.

“Of all the professions examined by the Sutton Trust in our 2019 report, Elitist Britain, senior judges were the most socially exclusive, with the highest numbers of both independent school and Oxbridge alumni. Roughly 7% of the general population attend a private school – but when looking at senior judges, this figure is almost two thirds (65%). ”

“Across all five elite firms – Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Slaughters – nearly 50% of the 804 London partners hailed from one of the two elite universities, based on data compiled from partners’ website biographies, legal directories and LinkedIn profiles, as well as alma mater resources.”

”Additionally, in every single Magic Circle firm, privately educated partners formed the largest group by educational background. In total, they accounted for more than half of the U.K.-taught total for which there is available data, according to the firms’ own diversity statistics.”

I do agree though there are always lots of Aussies/Kiwis at the big London firms and they never seem "posh".

At the bar, if anyone WC makes it to tenancy at a top set, a year in they'll sound like Sebastian Flyte's nerdy brother, even if they grew up in Toxteth.

I'm at a pretty big city firm and quite recently discovered that only approximately 30% of the lawyers at my firm went to state school (including me). I thought it would be the other way around! So I would say you're not wrong. My firm makes quite a bit about D&I, yet clearly isn't diverse at all.

Law degrees don’t cost any more than any other degree, do they?

I get there’s the conversion course, not sure how that’s funded these days but again, surely no more expensive than doing a masters?

It’s no surprise it’s posher now than 25 years ago. 25 years ago the left cared about the working class.

Perhaps a wider perspective:

I think performative diversity to keep those at the top content and safe is the purpose of the current variety of DEI. After all the whole thing is largely based on writings of a bored socialite (McIntosh) who, in her invisible backpack, to a large degree confused her class privilege for skin colour privilege.

The whole thing was rolled out across corporations and governments soon after the Occupy Wall Street movement. The super rich of this world were horrified that the masses started uniting and seeing who’s pulling the strings.

So they rolled out the contemporary equivalent of Jim Crow laws that were introduced to stop the poor whites and blacks in the South from uniting against the common oppressor. And hijacked the left.

Obv Jim Crow laws were much much worse but the end goal is the same: don’t unite, keep our class safe.

DEI allows performative diversity and is very convenient for the upper classes. So yes, I’d say it’s no surprise that this sort of diversity is on the increase in the profession.

We’re simultaneously being told that race is a social construct and encouraged to make decisions based on someone’s skin colour. Class is completely forgotten. The same thing happens at schools, it’s not just law.

I think they need to seem posh as part of the whole 'we know big important law stuff you wouldn't be able to handle without our expensive expertise' schtick.

If they talked like a rudeboy or EastEnders character you'd probably be more likely to have that accent if you're doing criminal defense, in order to make the client feel at ease. But they'd switch to posh in a convo with a barrister.

Lawyers are very highly paid actors aren't they.