Hayley Kirton reported for City AM on our leading lawyers research with Prime

Three-quarters (74 per cent) of top judges, defined as those who sit on the High Court and the Court of Appeal, received a private education, compared to just seven per cent of the UK population overall.

A report by the Sutton Trust and PRIME – an alliance of more than 80 UK law firms and legal departments, set up to offer work experience to young people from less privileged backgrounds – published today discovered that this figure is lower for solicitors as a whole, with 32 per cent of partners at firms having gone to a private school, although this rises to 41 per cent for London firms.

In a YouGov poll, more than half (52 per cent) of senior figures in the legal industry said that improving social mobility in the profession would be beneficial for their firm.

 “Today’s findings, in particular the worrying fact that the high proportion of privately educated judges has barely changed since the 1980s, warns us that there is still a big social mobility problem within the legal sector,” said Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation.