Thursday, 28 August 2014
LSB welcomes Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission transparency and diversity recommendations
We welcome today’s report on Elitist Britain by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and in particular their recommendations for greater publication of data and the opening up of diverse entry routes. The LSB has long emphasised the importance of data collection and transparency, along with widening access to the professions, and has through our statutory guidance on diversity and education and training, provided decisive leadership to the approved regulators on this.
A number of the steps the report calls for have begun to be taken in the legal sector - such as the collection and publication of data on social background, the use of CV blind application processes by some law firms and the development of more flexible routes into the professions. But we agree with the report’s assessment that a collective effort is needed to break open Britain’s elite and although headway is being made in our sector significantly more progress must still be made.
For further information, please contact our Communications Manager Vincent McGovern or by calling 020 7271 0059.
Notes for editors:
- In 2011 the LSB issued guidance to the frontline regulators introducing new transparency duties at firm and chambers level to monitor and publish diversity statistics. Information on the follow up to this guidance and the LSB’s focus on diversity can be found here.
- The Act created the LSB as a new regulator with responsibility for overseeing the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. The new regulatory regime became active on 1 January 2010.
- The LSB oversees nine approved regulators, which in turn regulate individual legal practitioners. The approved regulators, designated under Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the 2007 Act, are the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Master of the Faculties, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, the Association of Costs Lawyers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
In addition, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants are listed as approved regulators in relation only to reserved probate activities. - As at 1 April 2014, the legal profession comprised 138,243 solicitors, 326 alternative business structures, 15,279 barristers, 7,927 chartered legal executives and 5,404 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing. The sector was valued at £29.2 billion in 2013 (total turnover).