'Average solicitor' is ready to face tough challenges

Published on Sunday 4 April 2010 21:55

IN SCOTLAND, we have known for a few years that by 2011 the average solicitor will be female, under 30 and educated in a state school.

That knowledge was cemented by two research papers – "Women in the Legal Profession" and "Profile of the Profession".

Fast-forward a few years, and this hypothetical solicitor, in real time, me and most of my friends.

What is it that the average, pushing-30, female solicitor is aiming for in her professional and personal life? And can the two co-exist?

Let us look at the average, state school-educated solicitor. Baroness Scotland called this month for more to be done in order to encourage socially deprived young people to be given opportunities.

She called for "positive actions" to promote justice and social mobility, while hitting out at suggestions made by the Conservatives of a "broken Britain".

Specifically, in an interview with The Lawyer, she highlighted the need for schemes that engage young people from non-traditional backgrounds with the law. One such scheme highlighted was Youth Network, which involves the Crown Prosecution Service delivering law modules in secondary schools down south.

This is something that is important in its own right – empowering the public with information about their rights under the law to "demystify" the profession, as Baroness Scotland says, and it's right to start that in schools.

But breaking down stereotypes of the law and the profession might lead to more than that, and spark an interest in a young person from a non-traditional background to pursue their career in law.

These initiatives do just that, and statistics bandied around (I have done it myself) about the changing face of our profession, have tended to be part of how we demonstrate that ours is an evolving sector, to support a social inclusion agenda, and not least to dilute entrenched and actually inaccurate images of lawyers as men in pinstripe suits (wig optional).

And as I say, it is right that widening participation starts with the youngest in our communities, but we should not think that this in itself is the achievement.

The point that, as a profession, we want to be able to prove about the young, female solicitor under-30 and state school-educated – surely – is that she cannot only access the profession and do well in the university and early years, but be as successful as she wants to be throughout her career.

Can she? If we chart a typical timeline for the average new lawyer emerging in 2010, these days she is likely to have accrued significant levels of debt in order to graduate university.

She will, upon commencing work, be hit by student loan repayments. She might be quite senior in the workplace before she can afford her own home, and feel she has found her feet financially.

Alas, 30 is on the horizon – is this crunch time already?

I cannot purport to suggest the maternal instinct overtakes us all at a certain age. But given the law of averages, her next decision, and it is something she is unlikely to have considered much during those competitive law school days when exam results were all that mattered, is quite likely to be that she may have to find some way to balance a new family and a career.

Some women can take advantage of maternity and flexible working policies that support them on leave and upon their return to work.

But are flexible and supportive policies really widespread enough yet in our profession, given we're just on the cusp of welcoming this new breed of solicitor?

A lawyer I knew quipped "I'm on maternity, get me out of here!", but only as a joke, as she was promoted upon her return.

Others can follow, and this is where the profession can make a difference. This is where we can genuinely react to the changing demographic in the profession, and shape our policies and practices to fit.

We can move away from the principle of widening access as a success in its own right, and truly demonstrate that ours is an evolving profession that values the make-up of who it is that has become the average solicitor.

The statistic I gave at the start is merely a snapshot in time.

No longer an unknown quantity, the under-30s are living and breathing, walking among us, and want to succeed in their career, not only now but for the next 30 years.

With less than a year to go, are we prepared to let them bloom?

&#149 Collette Paterson is the deputy director of education and training at the Law Society of Scotland.