We live in a world of luminous diversity and there are few places where humanity’s rich variety is more apparent than in our capital city: a socioeconomic melting pot and haven for immigrants – whether from Belfast, Barbados or Bangalore – for over a thousand years. And yet, with certain elements of society remaining significantly under-represented, an examination of a cross-section of ‘the City’ today would not demonstrate the true extent of this diversity. While the solicitors’ profession has for some time acknowledged the importance of addressing this issue, the fact remains that, in 2008, it remains disproportionately white and middle class, if no longer quite so male.
Notwithstanding these sometimes obsessively PC times, I have nothing against white, middle-class men – not least for being one myself – or women. But in a profession that takes pride in nurturing equality of opportunity and in being attuned to the needs of the ‘global market’ like nowhere else, we might share a collective sense of disappointment that for all the attention given to this topic in recent years, the net result is still one where the next generation tends very significantly to be recruited in the image of the one before.
