Access to legal work experience and its role in the (re)production of legal professional identity

Abstract

The occupational closure experienced by solicitors drawn from ‘outsider’ groups (especially women) has been extensively documented. The growing importance of work experience as a gateway to the profession suggests that it may be playing an increasingly significant role in the processes of exclusion and the reproduction of professional identity. The lack of research into this ‘hidden’ moment in professional reproduction therefore represents a significant lacuna in our understanding of the (changing) solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. This paper reports on a preliminary exploration of legal work experience. It analyses data generated through collaboration with the Law Society in a survey of law firms. This is complemented by qualitative analysis of material obtained from firms’ websites and discussion boards. Throughout the paper we highlight the broader research questions suggested by this initial analysis.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two reviewers for their comments which have improved this paper and helped to clarify some of our terminology. We would also like to thank Fiona Woolf, Bill Cole and Joanne Cox at the Law Society for their help.

Notes

But see Galanter and Roberts who describe the expansion and development of ‘magic circle’ firms as, in recent years, a story of “inclusion … by the end of the twentieth century … by any standard the neo-modern firm was more diverse and inclusive than its predecessors” (2008, p. 170). It is noticeable, however that their account makes no reference either to research which establishes the secondary role which has been assigned to women and more recently people drawn from other minority groups, or to the role they have consequently played in supporting this expansion (see e.g. Hagan & Kay, 1995).

For example Law Society (2005a). Braithwaite (2008) argues that concern about the lack of diversity in the profession can be dated from 2005, in part as a result of pressure from the Black Solicitors’ Network and the Commission for Racial Equality; see, for instance, the Law Society (2005b) ‘Solicitors’ Race Equality Awards: the winners’.

Currently in England and Wales in order to qualify as a solicitor, a student must have a qualifying law degree or equivalent, and have successfully completed the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and the two-year training contract, typically undertaken within a law firm (SRA, 2007). Competition for training contracts is intense – hence the significance of work experience. A substantial proportion of students do not succeed in obtaining a training contract (Sommerlad, 2007).

It is difficult to find an appropriate term for aspiring solicitors who come from a social group lower in status to that of the normative solicitor. Carbado and Gulati (2000, 2003) refer to outsiders and insiders. There is a similar difficulty when referring to students drawn from a group which has previously not attended HE and who similarly do not fit the occupational norm or are otherwise marginalised. The usual term is ‘non-traditional’; however this can be read as pathologising them and constructing them as responsible for their prior absence from these fields. Nevertheless in view of the difficulty of finding appropriate alternatives we use these terms here.

Carbado and Gulati do not of course deny the significance of racial (and sexual) discrimination in motivating employers to recruit those who resemble them, but in focusing on the economics of the processes highlight what they term ‘the homogeneity incentive’ (2003).

Collier's fascinating analysis of representations of the corporate law career in advertising and publicity materials highlights their role in producing particular kinds of lawyers who will reproduce the profession's collective elite identity (2005).

We are grateful to the UKCLE for funding the next stage of our project which will engage with these issues.

See for example the Law Society Diversity Access Scheme (http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/becomingasolicitor/careerinlaw/equalityanddiversity.law) and Law Society (2005).

Rule 6. Solicitors’ Code of Conduct (Solicitors’ Regulation Authority, http://www.sra.org.uk/code-of-conduct.page). Firms with a civil or criminal legal contract with the Legal Services Commission must also have in place an Equality and Diversity Policy (Equality and Diversity Policy Guidance 2007, Legal Services Commission, p. 4). Accessed at: http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/docs/civil_contracting/070830EqualityandDiversityGuidanceforLSCProviders(1).pdf, on 11 April 2008.

However these arrangements carry a penalty; not only does their association with women solicitors act to reinforce traditional assumptions about gender roles, but part-time practitioners are also often seen as less professional (Fuchs-Epstein et al., 1999) and those women ‘accommodated’ in this way tend to experience difficulties in realising their partnership aspirations (Sommerlad & Sanderson, 1998).

The precise process governing training will change with the new LPC structure, which has been developed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in part as a result of recognition of the barrier to diversity represented by existing routes of entry (http://www.sra.org.uk/students/lpc.page). These new entry routes are unlikely, however, to affect the important role work experience can play.

Clearly the year groups represented in these figures do not necessarily equate and equally not every law graduate will wish to enter the legal profession. The competition suggested by these figures is, however, undeniable.

Despite this, gender is not the primary focus of this paper, given the broad story of success for women at point of entry to the profession. However, this does not ignore the fact that there may be gendered differences in the experience of work placements, which may reflect the challenges that women face later on in their legal careers (Sommerlad, 2002).

It should be noted that the Higher Education Statistics Agency does not provide a detailed breakdown on the numbers of graduating students.

Many students who have combined their studies with legal employment are then rewarded with contracts but generally only in the firm which has employed them (Francis & MacDonald, 2009; Sommerlad, 2007).

The current economic climate has led many of the largest firms to make significant cuts to its recruitment activities, for instance by cutting the numbers of vacation placements available, encouraging future trainee solicitors to defer with the offer of a lump sum, or even, in some cases, to withdraw from the training contract without compensation (McPartland, 2009).

Vacation placement deadlines fall much earlier in the year, and are not subject to the same code.

Although work experience offered to GCSE/A-level students is the most common form of experience offered by most firms (for instance 51.9% of the 81+ partner firms offer work experience at Years 10/11) and may provide useful contacts and begin the process of acculturation, it does not form part of the recruitment for training contract cycle and therefore falls outside our primary focus.

There are, of course, important debates about how to proceed with the analysis of material such as this, not least in terms of how the visual material relates to broader cultural processes (Nixon, 1996). For the purposes of this paper, however, this material is used primarily for illustrative purposes and as a starting point for further research questions.

See www.thestudentroom.co.uk/shorththread.php?.t=662840. Clearly many people will repeat post and view – but this does give some sense of the scale of the discussion traffic.

A partner in a 14 partner general practice dismissed trainees as a ‘waste of time and money’ (quoted in Sommerlad & Sanderson, 2009).

This of course does not mean that this sector does not offer placements/work experience at all; the Law Society survey revealed that 194 placements in total were offered by 149 two–four partner firms.

See Mann and Stewart (2000, p. 210), on the use of nicknames in online communities.

Although according to Rolfe and Anderson (2002, pp. 24–25) and discussion on the TSR thread, this is sometimes flouted by firms making informal offers.

Similarly, the underlying rationale for the elite US law firms’ commitment to the otherwise loss-making Summer Associate schemes is to assess potential – 90% of participants receive permanent offers (Ginsburg & Wolf, 2004, p. 954).

Even outside the Magic Circle and other City firms these salaries are extraordinarily high [£40,000 for newly qualified solicitors outside London with Hammonds; see also Collier (2005)]. For this reason and the privileged lifestyle it sells, it is easy to see why a traineeship with the corporate sector is now aspired to by most law students (Norman, 2004, p. 35; Collier, 2005).

A commonly used term to refer to those institutions whose status as ‘universities’ predates the removal of the distinction between universities and polytechnics under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. See for example Webb (1999, p. 232).

However other large firms, such as Slaughter and May, Ashurst and Linklaters, stress that securing a vacation placement is not the ‘be all and end all’: “it's a numbers game. One individual could find time for up to four placements, but will ultimately only be able to accept one training contract: I cannot stress strongly enough that they should still apply to us” (Slaughter and May, trainee recruitment partner, TheLawyer.com, 2007). However, when we asked firms what percentage of vacation placement students secured training contracts, the data were patchy: 57.7% of firms said less than 10%, but 20.7% said ‘Don't know’. The 81+ partner firms (those most likely to offer vacation placements for the purposes of recruitment) were more likely than any other firm category to say ‘Don't Know’. While this is frustrating, it is understandable, given the size of the firms and the fact that the broader focus of the study made it unlikely that the respondent was the recruiting principal.

A ‘Prioricator’ is apparently ‘The Prioritising Communicator’ while a ‘Professionary’ is a ‘Professional Visionary’.

Application forms tend to ask for a detailed breakdown of all GSCE and A-level marks.

There is an extensive literature on the inegalitarian and unmeritocratic effects of failing to contextualise educational achievement. For instance, Archer's research leads her to argue that lower A-level grades and attendance at less prestigious universities (“bronze … inauthentic” institutions), should not be seen as a signifier of the “productive capacities of individuals” (Archer, 2007, p. 641; and see Morley, 2007, p. 192). Conversely, Reay et al. caution us to remember that, “choosing to go to university is not really a choice at all for the middle class students. It is about staying as they are and making more of themselves, whilst for the working classes, it is about being different people in different places, about who they might be, but also what they might give up” (2005, p. 161).

The adoption of a fictitious name, as in this instance, is common practice by posters wishing to maintain their anonymity on discussion boards, such as this, which are regularly browsed by the recruiters.

This selective and irrational devaluation of skills acquired in the ‘wrong’ way mirrors the devaluation of skills acquired as a result of parenting or other caring work (Sommerlad & Sanderson, 1998).

This ‘sugar-coating’ can mean that new trainees are shocked by the reality of practice (Smith, 2006) and this is of concern for the Law Society ‘Great Quality of Life Debate’ which is concerned with retention. However, feedback from others involved in this project suggests that even if students feel they have been sold a ‘false prospectus’ (Rolfe & Anderson, 2002, p. 24), the difficulty of securing a training contract means they are prepared to put up with it.

It is here perhaps that informally arranged legal work experience becomes important (particularly in terms of who secures it and within which sectors), since it may compensate a non-traditional student for their lack of instinctive understanding of when to ‘push themselves forward’, or what constitutes ‘common sense’ within a corporate law environment.

This sporting analogy echoes Fowler's explanation of the instinctive understanding of what is needed within a particular social field, possessed by those with the appropriate habitus (1997, p. 18). As one of the reviewers noted, the emphasis on sports and drinking is reminiscent of traditional stereotypes of English Public Schools – an educational route which has been a powerful factor shaping participation within the legal profession (Shiner, 1999, 2000).

Bourdieu is clear that the appropriate habitus involves embodied attributes such as having the right ‘look’, rather than simply knowing the right thing to say (1990).