Law firm speech impediment

Capable applicants are being turned away by elite City law firms because they have the wrong accent.

Looking or sounding working class may be enough to warrant rejection from some City firms regardless of qualifications, ability or extra-curricular achievements, according to a study by Cass Business School.

The research, among 130 staff at five prominent City law firms, found that nearly all the firms’ lawyers came from privileged backgrounds. More than 90% had fathers who had been managers or senior officials. At two of the firms, more than 70% of the solicitors were privately educated.

One partner told Dr Louise Ashley, who conducted the research, about “one guy who came to interviews who was a real Essex barrow boy, and he had a very good CV, he was a clever chap, but we just felt that there’s no way we could employ him.

“I just thought, putting him in front of a client—you just couldn’t do it. I do know though that if you’re really pursuing a diversity policy you shouldn’t see him as rough round the edges, I should just see him as different”.
Another firm had adopted a policy of hiring almost exclusively from Oxbridge.
Dr Ashley said: “middle-class ethnic minority candidates with the right education and ‘the right accent’ would not necessarily experience discrimination, at entry level at least, and firms have ‘continued to recruit using precisely the same types of class privilege that have always been in operation’.

“As it is, on either a personal or collective basis, individuals within the profession have little incentive to introduce a more progressive approach which would genuinely recognise and reward difference on the basis of social class, since the inclusion of lawyers who are visibly working-class, or have regional accents, is perceived to threaten both their brand and their bottom-line”.