% of trainees and associates that went to private school...

[Gill M]

Hi everyone - first post on this forum!

I'm going into my second year at uni, so I'm starting to look online for advice as to my chances of securing a vacation scheme. While lurking, among all the very useful threads on TheStudentRoom, I came across this one: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6105646.

For those that don't have the time to read it, the author seems to have gathered data from law firms' diversity reports over the past few years, and put them in a table. It seems that, particularly for the 'top' commercial law firms, the percentage of trainee and associate solicitors who went to a private school is much higher than the UK average (which is either 7% or 12% depending on how you measure it). This is particularly true if we assume that the people educated overseas all went to private school. Some of the firms have 'private school' figures of over 50%!

Coming from a fairly average state school background, I'm quite worried that, despite all the social mobility initiatives, my application will be at a disadvantage because of either my school status or the polish/grades of those who went to private school. I'm also worried about not fitting in and getting on with my colleagues if/when I do get a TC!

I had a few questions (for anyone still reading :/)

1. Are these figures more or less in sync with what you've personally seen on vac schemes, training contracts, etc.?
2. Do you think that these figures have changed since the reports were published? A lot of the data seems to have been collected in 2017 or 2018
3. Do you have any ideas as to why privately-educated individuals are over-represented at these firms?

Thanks!!!!

 

[Abstruser]

Hi everyone - first post on this forum!

I'm going into my second year at uni, so I'm starting to look online for advice as to my chances of securing a vacation scheme. While lurking, among all the very useful threads on TheStudentRoom, I came across this one: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6105646.

For those that don't have the time to read it, the author seems to have gathered data from law firms' diversity reports over the past few years, and put them in a table. It seems that, particularly for the 'top' commercial law firms, the percentage of trainee and associate solicitors who went to a private school is much higher than the UK average (which is either 7% or 12% depending on how you measure it). This is particularly true if we assume that the people educated overseas all went to private school. Some of the firms have 'private school' figures of over 50%!

Coming from a fairly average state school background, I'm quite worried that, despite all the social mobility initiatives, my application will be at a disadvantage because of either my school status or the polish/grades of those who went to private school. I'm also worried about not fitting in and getting on with my colleagues if/when I do get a TC!

I had a few questions (for anyone still reading :/)

1. Are these figures more or less in sync with what you've personally seen on vac schemes, training contracts, etc.?
2. Do you think that these figures have changed since the reports were published? A lot of the data seems to have been collected in 2017 or 2018
3. Do you have any ideas as to why privately-educated individuals are over-represented at these firms?

Thanks!!!!

I think @Jessica Booker would be in a better position to answer this than I am, but I'll add my two cents anyway!

I'm studying the LPC now and I will agree that there are a lot of future trainees in my cohort who attended private school. I would say maybe 2/5 people I meet on a daily basis attended private school (there are also a fair amount of international trainees where public/private doesn't really mean as much as it does in the UK).

That said, I don't think the process was any easier for them than it was for candidates who attended state school. If you have good uni grades, experience and demonstrated motivation, I genuinely do not think that you will be filtered out on the basis of where you completed your GCSEs/A levels. For example, if you got straight A*s from a state school, I don't think you would be filtered out simply because you went to a state school rather than a private school. Applications might be more difficult if you got less than stellar grades - but the same would be true for a candidate from a private school. Almost every firm I applied to used contextualisation systems that would take your school and other circumstances into account so I really wouldn't worry too much about your grades or school holding you back at the application stage. It's not a helpful mindset to have!

I don't know why privately educated individuals are highly represented in City law. I have some theories, but I think @Jessica Booker probably has greater insight into this than I do.

Its quite early days to be worrying about fitting in with your fellow trainees on a TC, but for what it's worth, people seem to get along just fine on my LPC. Obviously, you won't get along with everyone you meet, but there isn't a glaring 'public/private' divide if that's what you're worried about. People seem to gel more on the basis of their personalities and interests, much like in real life haha. It isn't really based on where you went to uni either. In my experience, the mindset really seems to be that no matter where you went to school/uni, we're all on the same TC now. So while obviously where you went to school/uni might continue to be relevant re: networking with your former school/uni mates, it doesn't affect (IMO) how well you perform on the LPC/TC going forward, and certainly doesn't affect the friendships you make within your cohort.

I hope this helps. Good luck with it all.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Good old Johan.... I can’t say I miss my TSR days for having to try and explain flaws in theories like this.

Both of Johan’s assumptions will skew the data badly - and they are awful assumptions. It shows they don’t know much about educational systems across the world, nor factors that influence people to non disclose in this type of data. There’s usually a high representation of people who don’t disclose from minorities rather than the elite.

There’s little point comparing to the national average of people who are privately educated - you need to look at the demographic of those at university. And for law firms who typically have a high A-level filter, you need to look at those top ranked universities. That will be somewhere between 20-40% (approx) for most Russell Group unis (and that’s only the domestic students).

1) no - its heavily skewed given the poor assumptions.

2) No - the data won’t have changed that much due to the lag in graduate recruitment for law.

3) AAB grade filters, privately educated people having a stronger education in the skills needed to succeed in law (debating clubs, proper grammar), better connections to the industry (private schools will have more parents of the pupils who are lawyers), higher proportion of privately educated kids going to target universities, higher number of applications from people who are privately educated, confidence in applying (no one’s told them they can’t do it), better mentors and alumni networks, the number who have afford to self fund the GDL and/or LPC (you tend to see a much higher proportion of privately non-law grads than you do state school educated law grads in trainee intakes).

The list could go on

 

[Gill M]

I think @Jessica Booker would be in a better position to answer this than I am, but I'll add my two cents anyway!

I'm studying the LPC now and I will agree that there are a lot of future trainees in my cohort who attended private school. I would say maybe 1/5 or 2/5 people I meet on a daily basis attended private school (there are also a fair amount of international trainees where public/private doesn't really mean as much as it does in the UK.)

That said, I don't think the process was any easier for them than it was for candidates who attended state school. If you have good uni grades, experience and demonstrated motivation, I genuinely do not think that you will be filtered out on the basis of where you completed your GCSEs/A levels. For example, if you got straight A*s from a state school, I don't think you would be filtered out simply because you went to a state school rather than a private school. It is a different story if you got less than stellar grades - but that would be true for a candidate from a private school. Almost every firm I applied to used contextualisation systems that would take your school and other circumstances into account so I really wouldn't worry too much about your grades or school holding you back at the application stage. It's not a helpful mindset to have!

I don't know why privately educated individuals are highly represented in City law. I have some theories, but I think @Jessica Booker probably has greater insight into this than I do.

Its quite early days to be worrying about fitting in with your fellow trainees on a TC, but for what it's worth, people seem to get along just fine on my LPC. Obviously, you won't get along with everyone you meet, but there isn't a glaring 'public/private' divide if that's what you're worried about. People seem to gel more on the basis of their personalities and interests, much like in real life haha. It isn't really based on where you went to uni either. In my experience, the mindset really seems to be that no matter where you went to school/uni, we're all on the same TC now. So while obviously where you went to school/uni might continue to be relevant re: networking with your former school/uni mates, it doesn't affect (IMO) how well you perform on the LPC/TC going forward, and certainly doesn't affect the friendships you make within your cohort.

I hope this helps. Good luck with it all.

Thank you for your reply

I hope that I won't be filtered out on the basis of my school. I've heard a few things about contextualisation so I'll look into it further

Thank you for your last comment - I've met a lot of privately-educated people at uni, I got on great with some of them and not-so-great with others. Hope it will be the same in the workplace

Good old Johan.... I can’t say I miss my TSR days for having to try and explain flaws in theories like this.

Both of Johan’s assumptions will skew the data badly - and they are awful assumptions. It shows they don’t know much about educational systems across the world, nor factors that influence people to non disclose in this type of data. There’s usually a high representation of people who don’t disclose from minorities rather than the elite.

There’s little point comparing to the national average of people who are privately educated - you need to look at the demographic of those at university. And for law firms who typically have a high A-level filter, you need to look at those top ranked universities. That will be somewhere between 20-40% (approx) for most Russell Group unis (and that’s only the domestic students).

1) no - its heavily skewed given the poor assumptions.

2) No - the data won’t have changed that much due to the lag in graduate recruitment for law.

3) AAB grade filters, privately educated people having a stronger education in the skills needed to succeed in law (debating clubs, proper grammar), better connections to the industry (private schools will have more parents of the pupils who are lawyers), higher proportion of privately educated kids going to target universities, higher number of applications from people who are privately educated, confidence in applying (no one’s told them they can’t do it), better mentors and alumni networks, the number who have afford to self fund the GDL and/or LPC (you tend to see a much higher proportion of privately non-law grads than you do state school educated law grads in trainee intakes).

The list could go on

Hey - would you say that, if we ignored the underlying assumptions, and looked at the original data, the data is accurate enough today? Is there any reason for us to doubt the accuracy of the reports as they were published by the law firms?

I was really interested in the following section of your post: "That will be somewhere between 20-40% (approx) for most Russell Group unis (and that’s only the domestic students)." Does this mean that, from your experience, overseas students are more likely to have been privately educated than domestic (UK) students? Do you have any rough figures on what percentage of overseas students have been privately educated in your experience? I imagine that it's less than 100% but also quite high, at least from what I've seen at university.

Thank you for providing the explanation for (3), I always suspected it was a combination of factors instead of a single reason.

Once again, I'd like to thank both of you for your time!

 

[Jessica Booker]

Thank you for your reply

I hope that I won't be filtered out on the basis of my school. I've heard a few things about contextualisation so I'll look into it further

Thank you for your last comment - I've met a lot of privately-educated people at uni, I got on great with some of them and not-so-great with others. Hope it will be the same in the workplace


Hey - would you say that, if we ignored the underlying assumptions, and looked at the original data, the data is accurate enough today? Is there any reason for us to doubt the accuracy of the reports as they were published by the law firms?

I was really interested in the following section of your post: "That will be somewhere between 20-40% (approx) for most Russell Group unis (and that’s only the domestic students)." Does this mean that, from your experience, overseas students are more likely to have been privately educated than domestic (UK) students? Do you have any rough figures on what percentage of overseas students have been privately educated in your experience? I imagine that it's less than 100% but also quite high, at least from what I've seen at university.

Thank you for providing the explanation for (3), I always suspected it was a combination of factors instead of a single reason.

Once again, I'd like to thank both of you for your time!

You are not going to be disadvantaged by your school name. If anything a contextualised process may give you an advantage. You definitely won’t be filtered out - that’s a crazy assumption to make? Why would someone filter you out by the school attended?

No - the data is not accurate. It would be more accurate if the international people and people who did not respond were not included in the data. Anyone who does data analysis would laugh at the assumptions made.

International students studying at UK universities are more likely to come from high income families but that doesn’t mean they are privately educated - the international fees alone exclude many people from low income families unless they can get scholarships etc.

Privately educated can be all students from some countries. Some countries do not have private schools (or if they do they are typically for international people/ex pats being taught in English). One of the huge problems with analysis this data is the term private school/state school doesn’t translate well outside of the UK.

Even using just UK data doesn’t really show the right picture. Plenty of privileged people go to state schools, and they can be as good as private schools, particularly in affluent areas.

 

[Gill M]

You are not going to be disadvantaged by your school name. If anything a contextualised process may give you an advantage. You definitely won’t be filtered out - that’s a crazy assumption to make? Why would someone filter you out by the school attended?

No - the data is not accurate. It would be more accurate if the international people and people who did not respond were not included in the data. Anyone who does data analysis would laugh at the assumptions made.

International students studying at UK universities are more likely to come from high income families but that doesn’t mean they are privately educated - the international fees alone exclude many people from low income families unless they can get scholarships etc.

Privately educated can be all students from some countries. Some countries do not have private schools (or if they do they are typically for international people/ex pats being taught in English). One of the huge problems with analysis this data is the term private school/state school doesn’t translate well outside of the UK.

Even using just UK data doesn’t really show the right picture. Plenty of privileged people go to state schools, and they can be as good as private schools, particularly in affluent areas.

Thank you for all of this - guess I'll be focusing on the UK side of the data after all

One final question (which is perhaps what I should've asked you from the start, given your experience): what % of the intake of the firms you recruited for or know about came from private schools? Even approximately? I apologise if it's confidential info

 

[Jessica Booker]

Thank you for all of this - guess I'll be focusing on the UK side of the data after all

One final question (which is perhaps what I should've asked you from the start, given your experience): what % of the intake of the firms you recruited for or know about came from private schools? Even approximately? I apologise if it's confidential info

The last firm I work for as an employee was 5 years ago now - we weren’t even collecting data on this back then. My work with firms since hasn’t had direct access to this info.

Look at this way though - the only way it will get better is if more people have the confidence to apply in the first place - one of the major issues with any hiring stats was the application numbers at the start of the process. That’s one of the biggest obstacles to the industry improving these hiring stats.

So in short - stop worrying about it. If you do, you’ll contribute to the system by not trying.

 

[Gill M]

The last firm I work for as an employee was 5 years ago now - we weren’t even collecting data on this back then. My work with firms since hasn’t had direct access to this info.

Look at this way though - the only way it will get better is if more people have the confidence to apply in the first place - one of the major issues with any hiring stats was the application numbers at the start of the process. That’s one of the biggest obstacles to the industry improving these hiring stats.

So in short - stop worrying about it. If you do, you’ll contribute to the system by not trying.

Makes sense - maybe I am overthinking it. Thank you!

 

[Jessica Booker]

Makes sense - maybe I am overthinking it. Thank you!

The stats could definitely be better - but it’s not just law firms recruitment process that creates this system. Until we sort out better education in schools, and also better careers advice, this won’t get solved even if law firms perfect their processes

 

[SJamal]

I say don’t worry about all the private school bias. Your just as good as them (assuming you have the grades). This should motivate you to challenge the status quo and get a training contract. If your determined enough and you work hard the world is your oyster.

Focus on yourself and your skills and you will break down barriers. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many bias exist. For me it’s always more impressive to see someone come from not so great school and get the grades and a training contract at a top commercial firm, then someone coming from Eton, Harrow or the like.

 

[Gill M]

Focus on yourself and your skills and you will break down barriers. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many bias exist. For me it’s always more impressive to see someone come from not so great school and get the grades and a training contract at a top commercial firm, then someone coming from Eton, Harrow or the like.

I'm hoping that this will be the case! Thank you for your encouragement

 

[Jessica Booker]

Makes sense - maybe I am overthinking it. Thank you!

I'm hoping that this will be the case! Thank you for your encouragement

Even before contextualised recruitment systems, several firms I know of had application marking systems that would basically balance out those supposed biases.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Just found a stat that in graduate programmes more generally (not just law firms, although they are included), the average state school representation in graduate programmes is only 58% (higher education percentage is 91%). Clearly this is not just a law firm issue.

 

[Johan]

Hi everyone - I'm the guy who collected the data. Gill had messaged me about this thread and I meant to post here ages ago but didn't get round to it (lots of things going on irl).

• I think that it's clear - both from the comments from @Jessica Booker on here and from a couple of comments I got on TSR - that 'Assumption 3' is completely outlandish. Looking back, I'm not sure as to why I thought it was appropriate for me to include it. I've removed it from the relevant spreadsheet. I would (however) be interested in seeing the data behind this claim: "there’s usually a high representation of people who don’t disclose from minorities rather than the elite."
• To respond to a question @Gill M made - the data is collected by law firms because they're required to. They're not going to openly lie about anything in it. So the 'full figures' sheet should be accurate enough if you want to rely on that alone.
• The point about excluding 'no replies' and internationals is a fair one (again, not sure why I didn't think of it at the time) - I'll create a new sheet for it.

As for the points Jessica made - I see where she's coming from, but I do still think that a large proportion of non-UK educated individuals are privately-educated, and that their private education is meaningful insofar as it's a good measure of their social class.

• From what I've seen, most non-UK trainees at law firms studied law in the UK as undergrads, and most non-UK undergrads at reputable UK universities come from a few countries that do have a private-state divide that is similar to that of the UK, insofar as it involves (think Malaysia, HK, India, Pakistan, Australia, but also places like Italy, France, Greece, etc). There are tonnes of countries with a small private sector (such as the Nordic countries), but they're not the ones sending undergrads to the UK en masse. So one could probably adjust the private school assumption downwards (to, say, 50% or 70%), but putting it at zero and ignoring this trend entirely is going too far.
• I recently saw a survey about the most commonly-occurring schools among law students at 'top' universities in the UK, and the most common non-UK schools have all been 'top' private schools (think Raffles/Hwa Chong in Singapore, the Lahore Grammar Schools in Pakistan, the UWCs, etc.). If these are the people who are generally getting jobs in law firms, the 'private school = middle class' assumption stands.
  
• A lot of the points raised by Jessica in response to Assumption 2 are very odd. Expats, employees of multinationals, embassy staff that have a sufficiently high rank to get government subsidies for their kids' private education, etc. all tend to be middle class and above. The overwhelming majority enjoy professional and managerial jobs and salaries that are, if you adjust for local purchasing power, equivalent to or higher than those of their colleagues in the UK. So, again, the ability to afford 'private school' is indicative of one's parental class to a degree.
• The mere act of studying in the UK as a foreign student requires considerable social and financial capital. I'm not just making the point in relation to the tuition fees (there's some data out by Wonkhe as to how non-UK students tend to enrol at higher-ranking institutions - these institutions tend to charge the highest tuition fees). It's also a matter of being able to afford university up front (no loans, no eligibility for needs-based bursaries), afford life in cities that may be more expensive than where you came from, afford plane tickets, etc. Besides, the mere aspiration to study abroad often trickles down from family who also studied abroad and/or know people who have sent their kids abroad.

Of course, nothing in here should put anyone off from applying (including you, Gill!). The raw data and a less heavily weighted Assumption 2 both show that the majority of law firms' intakes come from UK state schools. There's also a concerted effort to bring the figure down further.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Law firms are not required to collect this data at all. It is just in their interests to do so (for a number of different reasons).

I don’t deny that’s there is a disproportionate amount of privileged people in trainee intakes, especially in international cohorts. Measuring just by “state” vs “private” school though, whether UK or non-UK is known to be a pretty flawed method of measuring this though.