Promoting social mobility and diversity in the legal aid sector has been, for a long time, a core theme of Young Legal Aid Lawyers’ (YLAL’s) work. We strongly believe that the legal profession, like justice itself, should be accessible to people from all walks of life. As part of this work, YLAL has produced reports that provide an overview of how diverse the profession really is, in 2010, 2013 and 2018. A key finding in our first report was that aspiring legal aid lawyers from diverse backgrounds found it more challenging to enter the legal aid profession, especially those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This meant that the profession was becoming increasingly less representative of the clients whom it aimed to help, ie, those without means and access to justice.

YLAL’s most recent report, Young Legal Aid Lawyers: social mobility in a sector on the brink, based its findings and recommendations on data gathered by Legal Aid Practitioners Group’s (LAPG’s) legal aid census of 2021. It included five surveys that ran between March and July 2021. Participants included former, current and prospective legal aid practitioners, and organisations (including law firms, not-for-profit agencies and barristers chambers) engaged in the provision of legal aid services.

The surveys did not just speak to the experiences of professionals who were current or former practitioners, but also aspiring practitioners and students. The responses to the student surveys showed that the majority of respondents who wanted to join the legal aid sector were influenced by their lived experiences. One person said:

The data collected by LAPG touched on gender, age, disability, ethnicity, socioeconomic backgrounds and caring responsibilities. A key finding in the report was that the ethnic diversity of student respondents was noticeably wider than that of practitioners. In addition, caring responsibilities were a prominent theme as they really impacted a person’s ability to work in the legal aid sector. One respondent explained:

While YLAL recognises that there has, indeed, been significant progress towards making the profession more diverse to include individuals with all protected characteristics, we still believe that there is much work to be done. In addition, the progress that has been made is at risk of being nullified if there is no immediate and radical change. It is likely that the current situation in relation to social mobility in the profession is much worse than when the census data was collected, due to the increasing and intensifying cost of living crisis. For many, particularly vulnerable and marginalised individuals, a career in legal aid is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Among the many recommendations made in the report, YLAL seeks a commitment from contributing firms for the continuation of the Social Welfare Solicitors Qualification Fund to ensure that this vital source of funding stays accessible to those from low-income backgrounds. We also recommend that government funds should be made available to small legal aid firms and not-for-profit organisations to help them to properly remunerate or reimburse those undertaking work experience with them, in line with the Best Practice Work Experience Charter that has been annexed to the report.

YLAL hopes that the report is circulated, read and understood widely, and that more legal aid firms appreciate the importance of improving social mobility and what can be done to promote this.