One of the biggest problems facing the legal profession is how to open it up to more students from less well-off backgrounds who have neither the money nor the contacts to break through easily into a law career.

Last year, the Sutton Trust, which was set up in 1997 to improve social mobility in the UK published research on the educational backgrounds of the UK’s top solicitors, barristers and judges. This research found that three out of four top judges, more than two-thirds of top barristers and more than half the partners at leading law firms had attended private schools which educate just 7% of the population. 81% of judges had been to Oxbridge.

“I know from personal experience” Cherie Booth QC said recently, “how difficult it is to enter the profession from a non-privileged background. The problem was not just lack of money although this was a big obstacle, but also the lack of contacts – family or friends who could help to find you work experience and mini-pupillages.”

As we know, she made it, and so did Baronesses Helena Kennedy and Patricia Scotland. But how many excellent would-be solicitors and barristers have fallen by the wayside? What can be done and what do law students generally think about moves to increase diversity in the legal profession?

I can answer the second question directly as I am in charge of research at The College of Law, the largest postgraduate centre for legal vocational studies, with some 6,000 students. About a quarter of them, including nearly 100 BVC students, responded to a questionnaire which we gave them as they enrolled for our Graduate Diploma in Law, Legal Practice Course or Bar Vocational Course last September. The survey included a few questions on their attitudes to diversity. Quite clearly they feel a lot could and should be done.

Chambers should take note that aspiring barristers also hold strong opinions on Diversity, with eight out of ten students indicating that it is important that the organisation they work for has Diversity policies and practices. When thinking about how diversity in the legal profession could be increased, the large majority felt that providing financial support, offering work experience and introducing students from non-privileged backgrounds to relevant contacts in the legal community, were the best ways forward. They were considerably less keen on the idea of pressuring firms to consider non traditional applicants by introducing targets.

In tune with their sense of responsibility and wanting to help people, almost three quarters felt it was fairly important that the organisation/chambers they work for have community/schools Pro Bono projects. And with regards to the environment, sustainability policies and practices were also regarded as important.

When they finish their studies the average debt estimated by the 1,489 students who responded to our survey, was going to be around £14,900 and the 97 barrister students expected to be further in debt - on average £16,000 - by the time they started their pupillages.

Law firms and Chambers can only do so much. The barriers to going to university and studying law start much earlier. By the age of sixteen it is not quite too late to encourage bright students from non-traditional backgrounds to aspire to study law.

Last year readers of Barrister Magazine might have read about a girl called Rothna Shah - thirty years or so years younger than Cherie - a very bright student from Leith, who has just completed her third year of a Law degree course at Edinburgh University. They will recall that the secondary school she attended is in a poor district of the city and was lucky to have thirty students in its sixth form of whom perhaps ten went to university. Her Bangladeshi father works hard to support his eight children, running a small business delivering Asian food and other materials. But she admits: “Although I have always wanted to be a lawyer, and my parents have always been ambitious for me, I doubt if I would have made it to this university without the Pathways to the Profession scheme run by the university and sponsored by the Sutton Trust.” She has scored a 2:1 with an A in her Medical Jurisprudence Paper and Bs in Media Law and Intellectual Property. In her final year she hopes to do even better in her Criminal Law and Gender and Justice papers and with her dissertation on organ donations. Subjects in which she is now passionately interested.

She has just completed one day shadowing Andrew Stewart, Clerk of the Faculty Advocates, in an immigration case at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

She said: “In the last two years I have been attending Pathways events and acting as a mentor to another student from a similar background as my own. We were well matched. Being a Mentor and being an Ambassador for Pathways, helping other students, made me work harder and realise just how lucky I was to be at this great university studying Law.

“Two years ago I spent a week at the same Court of Session as part of work experience. As I watched the advocates at work I marvelled at their expertise and their ability to take criticism from the judges. I thought ‘no way’ could I stand up in court and be like them. From that day I ruled Advocacy out of my personal equation.

“Now I am not so sure. I met Andrew at the Sutton Trust’s Tenth Anniversary celebration last October. I then spent a day watching him at work. Now with the increase in confidence that Pathways has given me, I thought perhaps I could become an advocate. I was really pleased to have this confidence backed up by Andrew’s own opinion. As I discussed the case with him he said that of course I would make a good advocate. Advocacy is now back on my agenda although with a year of further research I will be keeping my options open.

“You might like to know that my younger sister Imma, aged 18, wants to become a doctor. She too is on the Pathways Scheme and is in her second year of medicine at the University of Edinburgh.”

The Pathways scheme, which started in Scotland, has been running for a few years and targets students from non-professional families who will often be the first in their family to go to university, when they enter their sixth forms and encourages them to consider a legal or medical career. If they do they are given mentors, in the form of other further advanced law students, careers advice and introductions to law firms and advocates (the Scottish equivalent of barristers). Since 2003 231 Pathway students have entered the university and of these 133, including Rothna, are studying Law. They still have formidable obstacles to overcome, not least how they are to support themselves while they do their training. Rothna says somehow or other she will find the money. Her goal now is to do a postgraduate year on an MPhil course in Criminology.

Last year The College of Law decided to embrace and expand the Pathways to Law scheme. This decision was based on witnessing the success of the Edinburgh scheme, which was singled out for a best practice award by Universities UK. The College decided to invest £1.25m over five years and to put its money where its heart was. This has enabled the Pathways Scheme to be set up and to be targeting schools around each of the College’s six centres – in London Bloomsbury, London Moorgate, Birmingham, Guildford, Chester and York.

The scheme is aimed at future solicitors and is managed by the Sutton Trust which is putting a further £250,000 into the project. By 2010 we estimate that we could be admitting 750 Pathways students each year. Most of these will have come from schools with a large proportion of children on free school meals and which do not send many students to university. Assuming about 6,000 Law students continue each year to start training contracts as solicitors, this works out as a significant 12.5% of the total number enrolling each year with the Law Society.

Five leading universities - Leeds, LSE, Manchester, Southampton and Warwick - are in the final stages of recruiting and registering 250 Pathways students, with the initial events taking place before the end of October. The universities were selected because of the reputation of their law courses, their record of commitment to widening participation and their existing links with the College of Law’s six centres.

The universities will deliver a variety of academic and skills-based sessions for the Pathways students throughout their two year participation in the scheme, and each Pathways student will be allocated a current LLB student as a mentor. Students will also receive detailed advice, guidance and support throughout the university application process.

The College and the Sutton Trust have been asking leading law firms to help in terms of meeting these students, providing mentors, offering them work experience and considering them for training contracts. We have so far had an encouraging response.

Five leading law firms have pledged more than £350,000 over the next five years to help finance what is now a £2m initiative to attract fresh talent to the legal profession. Allen and Overy, DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Lovells have committed both time and money to the scheme. Crucially, participating law firms will provide work experience placements to the 250 students who enter the programme each year.

In a joint statement Professor Nigel Savage, Chief Executive of the College, and Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “The contributions from law firms are especially welcome as they will enable us to enhance the scheme still further through national events and web-based support packages, and may enable more students to benefit from Pathways in the future. But even more important than that is the authoritative weight that such firms bring to the project, showing their determination to widen access to the law. Their help in terms of providing work placements within their firms will be especially valuable.”

For those students wanting to become corporate or commercial lawyers, the financial obstacles are not so formidable. We are already working with a number of top firms (including Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Linklaters) on firm-specific LPCs. The partnerships we have with these and other firms mean that all their postgraduate course fees are paid for.

When it comes to students keen to do Legal Aid work we have a similar scheme with the Legal Services Commission which will provide some help with course fees. We still need to find some form of funding help for those students attracted to the universities through the Pathways scheme who wish to work for High Street and other small firms who cannot fund them through their courses.

The Pathways scheme will cover Bar students. But they could be lost to the Bar if the profession does not respond to them in the same was as solicitor firms are likely to do. We will need help from Barristers Chambers. We have asked them if they would consider providing mentors, offering Pathway students special pupillages and organising events, perhaps sponsored by the Inns, where they can meet barristers, benchers, judges and law lords. Perhaps the Inns could look favourably on them for scholarships and find sponsors of the kind they offer their own student members. A positive response from the Bar Council is expected soon.

The College is happy to talk and meet with anyone else to see how this project, which will enrich the profession with diversity, can be furthered.