The legal profession’s progress towards diversity may be about to falter, lawyers warned at this week’s launch of the Black Solicitors Network’s sixth annual Diversity League Table.

They warned that women and black and minority ethnic (BME) lawyers remain under-represented in the higher echelons of the profession, with most high-flyers white men. Firms continue to work in a ‘family-unfriendly way’, driving many women elsewhere.

City firm Webster Dixon joint managing partner Michael Webster said that progress towards diversity was likely to be further inhibited by £9,000-a-year university tuition fees. ‘This is a real issue for kids from working- class backgrounds. Social mobility has always been a barrier for entering the profession, but things are about to become much worse,’ he said.

Vanessa Havard-Williams, environment and climate regulatory partner at magic circle firm Linklaters, said: ‘The profession is making progress on the long and winding staircase to a truly inclusive culture, but there is a long way to go yet.’

However Law Society president John Wotton said he was ‘heartened by the way the challenge is beginning to be addressed by solicitors’.

The latest league table, edited by Webster Dixon, reveals a partial improvement in diversity across participating firms. The proportion of female partners has remained almost static for five years, rising from 22% to 23%. However, the proportion of BME partners is now 5%, compared with 4% in 2007. BME trainees now make up 16% of the total, with female trainees 57% of the total.

In the UK Diversity Legal Awards 2011, announced at the event, Shoosmiths was named firm of the year. The award for attracting and recruiting talent from diverse backgrounds went to City firm Sidley Austin, while Linklaters counsel Paulette Mastin and Shoosmiths recruitment manager Rita Tappia were named joint diversity champions. London chambers 25 Bedford Row won the award for retaining a diversity of talented people and the chambers of the year award went to London chambers Hardwicke.