Career Paths and Choices in a Highly Differentiated Profession: The Position of Newly Qualified Solicitors
| Date | 01 July 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00339 |
| Published date | 01 July 2001 |
Career Paths and Choices in a Highly Differentiated
Profession: The Position of Newly Qualified Solicitors
Andrew Boon*, Liz Duff** and Michael Shiner***
Differences in the working lives of solicitors have become increasingly marked in
recent years. Growing numbers of lawyers are employed in the public and
corporate sectors and, with the increasing size and wealth of City of London
commercial firms, there are significant differences between these firms and those
`high-street'firms that serve local communities. These differences impact on
lawyers throughout training and beyond, both in terms of rites of passage into the
profession and in conditions of employment. This research, the final stage in a
longitudinal survey spanning the 1990s, combines quantitative and qualitative
methods to explore the reactions of newly qualified solicitors to their work.
Building on the project’s previous surveys, which charted the nature of
disadvantage suffered by many prospective entrants to the legal profession, the
research finds a large measure of satisfaction regarding careers. It also identifies
causes for concern, including increasing specialisation in legal education and the
potential separation of the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of professional
practice.
The issue of membership, and hence access, is a central theme of the study of legal
professions.1Since incorporation in the last century, inclusiveness was the key to
the political strength of the Law Society.2More recently the extension of this
policy to women and ethnic minorities has been seen as socially desirable, either
because it facilitates access to justice, or equal opportunities for individuals, or
groups, or because it is believed that the legal profession should broadly reflect the
composition of society at large.3Thus, while the promise of a fair society has
raised issues of access and representation as matters of social and political concern
ßThe Modern Law Review Limited 2001 (MLR 64:4, July). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 563
*Professor of Law and Head, School of Law, University of Westminster, London.
**Chair of Department of Academic Legal Studies, School of Law, University of Westminster.
*** Senior Research Fellow, Public Policy Research Unit, Department of Social Policy and Politics,
Goldsmith’s College, University of London.
We are extremely grateful to the solicitors who took part in this project. We thank the Law Society of
England and Wales for providing the funding, Gerry Chambers, Sumitra Vignaendra, Carole Willis and
Judith Sidaway, of the Society’s Research Policy Planning Unit, for their support and guidance, and Gerry
Chambers, John Flood and Tim Newburn for helping to establish the collaboration between the researchers.
We also thank Alan Marsh and Jim Skea of the Policy Studies Institute for assisting with project
management, Richard Moorhead and members of the National Committee of the Trainee Solicitors’ Group
and Stephen Friday, Chairman of the African, Caribbean and Asian Lawyers’ Group for assistance with
questionnaire design. We are indebted to Rita Goldberg and Karen MacKinnon of the Policy Studies
Institute for assistance with the quantitative data and Avis Whyte of the University of Westminster School
of Law for assistance in conducting interviews. All opinions and errors are our own.
1 See, for example, R. Abel and P. Lewis, Lawyers in Society: The Common Law World (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988); R. Abel, The Legal Profession in England and Wales (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1988); R. Dhavan, N. Kibble and W. Twining (eds), Access to Legal Education and
the Legal Profession (London: Butterworths, 1989) vi.
2 H. Kirk, Portrait of a Profession: A History of the Solicitor’s Profession, 1100 to the Present Day
(London: Oyez Publishing, 1976).
3 W. Twining, ‘Access to legal education and the legal profession: a Commonwealth perspective’ in
Dhavan et al, n 1 above.
for all organisations,4it is a signal issue for professions. In fact, however, the
profession’s ethical commitments to public service and to fairness, reflected in
enlightened policies on these issues, are undermined by indirect discrimination in
recruitment and retention decisions in firms of solicitors and chambers of
barristers.5Academic analysis reflects considerable ambivalence on these issues.
Over the past decade there has been a growing willingness to accept the legitimacy
of the elitist assumptions of recruiters and to shift responsibility for ‘the problem’,
including the frustrated expectations of intending lawyers, to educational
providers.6This response is based, to a large extent, on the perception that too
many law graduates are produced for the law jobs available, a consequence of a
significant expansion in student numbers over the past thirty years.
The liberalisation of university admissions criteria and of the law curriculum,
particularly at the vocational stage, has produced a more diverse corpus of
potential lawyers than might have been envisaged even a decade ago.7The struggle
of both branches of the legal profession to ensure that selection is free of bias is
largely concealed in the meticulous data compiled by the profession, which tends
to show increasing numbers of female and ethnic minority practitioners.8
Academic literature, however, has warned of the risk of a continuing impact on
access, and, significantly, on progression, of sex and gender,9race10 and class.11
The production of an ever larger and more heterogeneous graduate body in law has
therefore more clearly delineated substantial barriers to entry that are resistant to
4 For example, the Metropolitan Police, as a result of the Macpherson Report (The Stephen Lawrence
Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny (1999) Cm 4262-I), the British
Broadcasting Association (see M. Wells, ‘Dyke race pledge on BBC jobs’ Guardian, 8 April 2000),
and Marks and Spencer (The Independent 26 February 1999, 3) which produces a pack, Equal
Opportunities (undated).
5 For discussion of the ethical context of the employment relation see generally A. Boon and J. Levin,
The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1999) ch 6 and
R. Lee, ‘Up or Out – Means or Ends? Staff Retention in Large Firms’ in P. Thomas (ed),
Discriminating Lawyers (London: Cavendish, 2000). For the profession’s equal opportunities policies
see N. Taylor (ed), The Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors (London, Law Society
Publishing, 1999) ch 7 (anti-discrimination rules and model policy), General Council of the Bar, Code
of Conduct of the Bar of England and Wales (London: General Council of the Bar) (para 204.1 and
Annex Q, Summary of the Equality Code for the Bar) and P. Thomas, ‘Introduction’ in Thomas (ibid)
xiv et seq. The Bar’s record is set out in an unpublished analysis of the allocation of pupillage
contracts which shows that it is easier for an Oxbridge graduate with a 2:2 to get a training contract
than for a new university student with a first class degree (L. Twigg, Analysis of Combined 1998/
1999/2000 PACH statistics – we are grateful to the Education and Training Committee of the General
Council of the Bar for permission to cite this research).
6 Thomas argues that the practice of selecting only from elite institutions may be promoted as ‘sound
recruitment policies’ (n 5 above, at p xvi) while contributors to his volume on discriminating lawyers
urge providers of legal education to examine their priorities in providing opportunities to part-time
students (A.M. Francis and I.W. McDonald, ‘All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go? Part-time Law
Students and the Legal Profession’ in Thomas ibid.).
7 N. Kibble, ‘Access to Legal Education and the Legal Professions in England’ in Dhavan et al, n 1
above.
8 See, eg, B. Cole, Trends in the Solicitors’ Profession: Annual Statistical Report 1999 (London: The
Law Society, 2000), but see B. Cole and J. Sidaway, ‘Job’s Worth’ (1996) Gazette, 93/40 October.
9 E. Skordaki, ‘Glass slippers and glass ceilings: women in the legal profession’ (1996) International
Journal of the Legal Profession 7; H. Sommerlad, ‘The Myth of Feminisation: women and cultural
change in the legal profession’ (1994) 1 International Journal of the Legal Profession 31.
10 In relation to barristers see the Barrow Report (Final Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Equal
Opportunities on the Bar Vocational Report, Equal Opportunities at the Inns of Court School of Law
(1994); J. Shapland and A. Sorsby, Starting Practice: Work and Training at the Junior Bar (Sheffield:
Institute for the Study of the Legal Profession, 1995).
11 In relation to solicitors see T. Goriely and T. Williams, The Impact of the New Training Scheme
(London: The Law Society, 1996).
The Modern Law Review [Vol. 64
564 ßThe Modern Law Review Limited 2001
policy initiatives. These barriers become more significant with each stage of
education and training and appear almost insurmountable around elite sectors of
the profession where financial rewards are the greatest. The problem is exacerbated
by specific factors, such as the time taken to establish a practice at the Bar and the
exponential growth of large, commercially orientated solicitors’ firms which
dominate the market in training opportunities.12
The research on which this article is based offers significant new insights into
these issues. Over six separate surveys, the Entry to the Legal Profession Project
comprised a longitudinal study of a cohort of students as it passed through the
initial and vocational stages of legal education, including apprenticeship, through
to employment as fully-fledged lawyers. The cohort comprised half of the
undergraduate law students in England and Wales, and a complete year of non-law
graduates undertaking conversion courses (referred to collectively as the Common
Professional Entrance ‘CPE’), into the early stages of practice. This article
analyses data from the sixth and final survey, and builds on the conclusions of
previous surveys. The main focus of earlier surveys was the recruitment decisions
of firms and chambers in relation to the members of the cohort. The sixth survey is
also concerned with these decisions but from the perspective of the consequences
for the surviving members of the cohort, particularly in terms of their experience,
their mobility, their satisfaction and their future prospects. Some important issues
for legal professionalism are also indicated, including the significance for
intending professionals of specialisation among firms and the fragmentation of
the legal profession. The conclusion considers these issues and the implications of
the findings for legal education and for recruitment to, and retention within, the
profession.
Methodology
The undergraduates included in the survey were second-year students admitted in
1990 and due to graduate in 1993, around 3,000 students. This group was selected
from twenty-nine ‘Oxbridge’ colleges and thirty-one red-brick, post-1942 and
modern universities. In the second survey all of the students studying for the CPE
were added to the sample.13 Thus, by the time of the third survey, a cohort of some
four thousand law-degree and CPE students were encompassed by the research.
They had, typically, completed their vocational training and were engaged in the
early stage of traineeship or pupillage.14 The fourth survey revealed that around
half of respondents had commenced ‘apprenticeship’ with a firm or chambers.15 By
the fifth survey the cohort survivors were spread across the different stages of
training, with the ‘lead group’ at the end of their two-year training contract or in
12 See further J. Flood, ‘Megalaw in the U.K.: Professionalism or Corporatism? A Preliminary Report
(1989) 64 Indiana Law Journal 569; R.G. Lee, ‘From Profession to Business: The Rise and Rise of
the City Law Firm’ in P. Thomas (ed), Tomorrow’s Lawyers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1992);
Boon and Levin, n 5 above, ch 2; G. Hanlon, ‘A Profession in Transition? – Lawyers, The Market and
Significant Others’ (1997) 60 MLR 799.
13 Both of these stages were dealt with in one report, D. Halpern, Entry Into the Legal Professions: The
Law Student Cohort Study Years 1 and 2 (London: The Law Society, 1994).
14 M. Shiner and T. Newburn, Entry Into the Legal Professions: The Law Student Cohort Study Year 3
(London: The Law Society, 1995).
15 M. Shiner, Entry Into the Legal Professions: The Law Student Cohort Study Year 4 (London: The Law
Society, 1997).
July 2001] Newly Qualified Solicitors
ßThe Modern Law Review Limited 2001 565
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