‘Echoes of the old boys club’: social mobility in IP
Alice Stephenson’s journey to IP career success is an inspirational one. Pregnant at 18, and disowned and left homeless by her family, she ignored those who dismissed her dream of a successful professional career as she became a teenage mother.
“I was still determined to pursue a career even though I had a young child. Financially, things were incredibly challenging for me: we really didn't have very much at all,” she reflects. “I had to work alongside studying and being a Mum”.
But the head of Stephenson Law proved the naysayers wrong. After fighting ‘tooth and nail’ to get into university, she worked in human resources and then embarked on a second career as a lawyer.
Against the odds
Despite being told by a magic circle firm partner that ‘she would never make it’, Stephenson again defied the odds and founded a firm that now has offices based in Amsterdam, Bristol, and London.
However, Stephenson’s tale of triumph over adversity is a rarity, as research continues to underscore the legal sector’s dearth of socio-economic diversity.
This month, the City of London Socio-Economic Diversity Taskforce, published a study highlighting the barriers that persist for talented people, who like Stephenson, come from straitened circumstances.
According to the survey, published on August 11, employees from a family with a professional background are 43% more likely to reach a senior level than their working-class colleagues. Meanwhile, 64% of senior leaders surveyed were from a family with a professional background—almost double the proportion (37%) of the UK population.
The study drew almost 9,500 responses from 49 organisations across the UK— the largest data collection to date on socio-economic background across the UK financial and professional services sector.
Landmark report
The survey also showed that 26% of senior employees attended fee-paying schools, which is three times the national average of 7.5%, while 20% of junior-level and 16% of mid-level respondents attended fee-paying schools.
Nearly four in ten (37%) of respondents from a working-class background felt their background had held them back at work, compared to 18% from a professional background.
The report found that employees from working-class backgrounds felt less able to be themselves at work, with respondents more likely to feel like an outsider, more likely to feel that their background negatively affected their career, and that they did not have the same chances of success in the workplace.
Just 1% of respondents in senior positions were ethnic minority women from working-class backgrounds.
Elsewhere, statistics from Solicitors Regulation Authority show that 68% of lawyers working in law firms are from a professional background (compared to 37% nationally) and 29% of lawyers attended a fee-paying school compared to 7.5% nationally.
In a survey carried out by WIPR earlier in the year and due to be published in Autumn, more than half of participants (55%) agreed that having a less privileged background remained a barrier to the profession.
Prejudice and discrimination
Social mobility is a huge issue in the legal sector, agrees Stephenson, who believes that she was judged at the start of her legal career for being a single mother from a less privileged background.
“The reality is that law is a demanding career, and while it has the potential to be hugely rewarding, it’s also an industry that revolves around billable hours, presenteeism, and the echoes of the old boys’ club,” says Stephenson.
“There's still a lot of prejudice and discrimination related to how people look, or whether they went to a certain school or university. It's crazy.”
Commenting on the task force's findings, Law Society president I. Stephanie Boyce said that the report “drew urgent attention to the need for professional services”— including the legal sector— to improve their socio-economic diversity.
“As a child brought up in a single-parent household on a council estate I can understand why people from similar backgrounds may feel left out in the workplace,” she noted.
“Not having the connections others may have made it more difficult for me to break into and progress in the legal sector.”
A set of rules
Trademark lawyer and partner at Noerr, Michael Hawkins, agrees that social mobility is still “very much a work in progress” and is beset by obstacles such as the threat of unconscious ‘rule-breaking’.
“Historically, the legal sector has had serious problems with social mobility, and things are changing gradually for the better. For example, I came from a lower socio-economic background, and was still hired by a great firm in London, where I started my IP career,” he explains.
But barriers remain even after this first hurdle of entry is traversed, argues Hawkins.
“There are many unwritten rules in the legal profession: if you don't come from the right social background, that means that you are not familiar with those rules. A lack of mentorship means that nobody can navigate these rules with you.”
In his view, there are ways that firms can kind of get around this and can help, for example, using blind recruitment to circumvent the implicit biases that can prevail regarding a candidate's educational background or considering less traditional routes to entry.
In a bid to highlight socio-economic disparities, The Law Society is launching a web hub, which will support members to take action on social mobility.
The hub will include helpful information and resources, and will also present a range of practical and expert resources to help organisations ‘monitor and promote socio-economic diversity’.
But for Stephenson, the wait to see greater inclusion and opportunities proved too long, and she decided to found her own company—and her own rules, which involved eschewing “legal jargon, archaic traditions, and outdated processes”.
“It was only when I started my own law firm that I felt confident enough to be able to stop hiding parts of myself and to talk very openly about the fact that I was a homeless, teenage Mum,” she says wryly.
Now based in Amsterdam, where she runs her trio of offices, she explains the appeal of her adopted home. “It’s very inclusive, and is one of the most diverse cities in the world. I just love living here where it doesn't matter what you look like, what you wear, or what your background is. It’s quite different to living in the UK.”
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