News focus: progress report on legal profession

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The Law Society’s 28th Annual Statistical Report might appear to be a rather desiccated agglomeration of facts, tables and bar charts. It is not an avowedly political document and, for that reason, raises more questions than it answers. As a snapshot of changing trends in the profession, however, the survey is invaluable - even more so for 2011, the last year before the full blast of market liberalisation begins to manifest itself in the numbers.

One point worth reflecting on is just how far the profession has travelled in recent decades. To digress somewhat, much was made last weekend of the fact that Manchester City have not won the league title for 44 years - and these statistics do indeed confirm that 1968 was a very long time ago. Why? Take a look at the bar chart below: in 1968, just 3% of solicitors in England and Wales were women. The feminisation of the profession did not begin in earnest until the early 1970s - and it has not abated since.

Women now account for nearly half of all PC holders and two-thirds of trainees; though this warrants only a half-hearted cheer. Some 46% of male private practitioners are partners, compared with just 20% of women; and this cannot be explained away by citing time lags. Even after equalising the levels of experience, higher proportions of men achieve partnership status than women. Of solicitors in private practice with 10-19 years’ experience - the band with the greatest number of partners and sole practitioners - 71% of men are partners or sole practitioners compared with only 43% of women. The profession still has some work to do on gender equality.

As women have poured into the profession in huge numbers, its size has increased dramatically. The number of PC holders has trebled since 1981, from 39,795 to 121,933. This is a success story of sorts, but one that raises difficult questions about supply and demand during a double-dip recession. The profession is still growing, too, though at a slower rate than during the ‘long boom’, which saw numbers rise by 41% in the decade from 2001 alone (see bar chart, below).

Other trends that demand to be noticed include the profession’s increasing polarisation - and London-centric profile - as the financial services sector exploded (then imploded) in the 1990s and noughties. At 31 July 2011 there were 50 firms with 81 partners or more, of which 40 were headquartered in the City and 42 in Greater London. In the group of 212 firms with 26 partners or more, six out of 10 were located in Greater London. In the Capital, there was one practitioner per 203 head of population, compared with an average density in England and Wales of 1 per 650.

In 2011, the 1.8% of firms with 26 or more partners employed 36% of all principals and 42% of all solicitors in practice. By contrast, sole practices accounted for 45% of firms yet employed only 9% of all private practitioners. The profession’s increasing diffusion is also reflected in the growth of the in-house sector. In the last decade, the proportion of PC holders employed outside private practice in England and Wales grew from 18% to 28% - though it remains to be seen whether this trend will persist with the full implementation of deep cuts to public sector spending. Commerce and industry showed an even split between women and men, but women far outstrip men in local government.

This week, the Solicitors Regulation Authority met to discuss scrapping the mandatory salary minima for trainees and its potential ramifications for diversity. One interpretation of these data is that trainees in relatively deprived areas - and women - stand to suffer most. Average starting salaries in central London are nearly double the mandatory minimum anyway. They are lowest in Wales, the north-east and north-west (see table, below). Of course, firms in these areas might offer more traineeships if the minima are scrapped; those salary stats will make for instructive analysis over the next few years.

'The number of PC holders has trebled since 1981, from 39,795 to 121,933. This is a success story of sorts, but one that raises difficult questions'

Overall, trainees’ average starting salary was £26,349, a very marginal rise of 0.08% on 2010. But men were paid 5.6% more than women, which the report suggests may be partly explained by the different profiles of the firms in which entrants train. Men are more likely to be placed in bigger firms which pay higher wages. Commenting on the 2011 report, Nina Fletcher, head of research at the Law Society, said: ‘The report provides a useful snapshot of the solicitors’ profession before the onset of alternative business structures and provides the only and most comprehensive basis for examining long-term trends in the solicitors’ profession.

‘It is a useful tool for legal practices that want to compare their make-up to the wider profession or understand their regional context, and for anyone interested in understanding the overall profile of the solicitors’ profession.’