News
Private schools still rule the legal world
23 November 2015
Frances Gibb reported for The Times on our research with Prime on leading lawyers
Three quarters of senior judges and 71 per cent of top QCs are still privately educated, making them ten times more likely than the general population to have been to an independent school, a survey shows today.
Despite efforts to improve the social composition of the legal profession, it remains dominated by those who have had a private education — with little change since the 1980s. The proportion is smaller among partners in the City’s top five firms, known as the Magic Circle, where one in two were privately educated.
The analysis of the backgrounds of leading lawyers is published by the Sutton Trust, the charity that promotes social mobility, and Prime, a diversity access scheme ….. Sir Peter Lampl, the chairman of the Sutton Trust, said that the findings showed there was “still a big social mobility problem within the legal sector”.
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