PROGRESS BY DEGREES: LAW, LAUNCHPADS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

It is tempting for anyone in a busy job to focus solely on the work at hand.

Attending to urgent business, especially when it can have significant consequences for people’s private and professional affairs, means that no-one understandably wants to risk making a mistake.

However, I would suggest that it is important not to lose a broader sense of perspective either.

Doing so can have ramifications both now and in the future.

When we launched Private Client Solicitors (PCS) almost four years ago, we made a commitment to not only recruit the most capable lawyers but to do our bit to help them fully realise their potential.

We also recognised how it was essential to extend such opportunities for those individuals who were keen to pursue legal careers of their own.

That is why we agreed to work with the University of Law, the UK’s largest provider of legal education, and our colleagues at another leading law firm, Squire Patton Boggs.

We share a desire to give the next generation of lawyers the best chances of taking their places in an industry which we all enjoy.

Yet we recognise that particular challenges existed.

One is in relation to the differences in attainment between university students of different ethnicities – something which has become known as the ‘ethnicity degree awarding gap’.

For instance, a 2019 report by Universities UK (UUK), the body which represents 141 universities, found that undergraduates from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds were less likely to achieve higher degree grades than their white counterparts (https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/downloads/2021-07/bame-student-attainment.pdf).

Together with University of Law in Manchester and Squire Patton Boggs, we devised a programme designed to support BAME students in their studies and, hopefully, propel them to the best possible result.

Along with two other members of the PCS’ team, Jaima Mistry and Michelle Tonge, we staged more than a dozen workshops starting in September last year with a group of students whose first year exams indicated that they might be on course for a 2:2 or third-class degree.

The programme effectively amounted to mentoring, aiming to build their confidence and illustrate how best to improve their academic performance in order to fulfill their ambitions as well as indicating how they might indeed gain a foothold in the law despite not having any personal experience of the profession.

I am pleased to say that, so far, the exercise has paid off. Almost all of those who were involved have bettered their degree prospects and, on average, are now looking at graduating with at least a 2:1.

What was especially satisfying was that, above and beyond the academic record, the workshops really seemed to encourage the participants, creating a positive legacy.

One described the programme as a “launchpad”, while others talked about how they now regarded each other as a team, even though they hadn’t known each other prior to taking part.

In my opinion, our work with the University of Law is one element of what I hope will be a broader push by the legal industry.

It is also a process monitored by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), the body which oversees the professional conduct of more than 125,000 solicitors and other authorised individuals working both in private practice and across the public sector.

Earlier this year, the SRA published figures showing that although there had been an increase in the employment of BAME lawyers in recent years, they still made up less than one-fifth of all those employed within the industry (https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/equality-diversity/diversity-profession/diverse-legal-profession/#:~:text=All%20lawyers,-There%20has%20been&text=Overall%2C%2019%25%20of%20lawyers%20are,from%20a%20Mixed%2FMultiple%20background).

I recognise that our work with the University of Law is certainly not the only contribution of its kind.

It is a project though which we are keen to continue, not least because we have seen the effect which it has had on those students whom we had the pleasure of working with.

Nevertheless, I think it is important that more of our legal peers play their part too to ensure that the law is genuinely diverse and regarded as a potential job for all students considering their career options, regardless of their social or ethnic backgrounds.