Unjust rewards?

Good piece John, and no surprises really - depressing as it is. Things won't change until law firms are courageous enough to break the home counties-private school-rugby club-oxbridge-training contract-associate-partner track which dominates in the large firms.

The solution is quite simple: get more people in from state schools, who are, generally speaking, far more rounded, have more emotional intelligence and do not grow up utterly divorced from the realities of the world around them.

billy ocean -07 Aug 2008 | 01:00

It would be interesting to know what Polly Anna, ooops, sorry, Polly Toynbee earns. I bet it is a very big multiple of the minimum wage and probably more than all lawyers bar partners at the magic circle. And where exactly are the statistics to prove their point about lawyers in comparison with other professions, or indeed John's point about US lawyers? Where are the surveys with chartered accountants, surveyors, Harley Street plastic surgeons etc?

Oh, there don't appear to be any.

Unjust Rewards? Unjust hype for a manifesto for the Politics of Envy Party more like.

Supercynic -07 Aug 2008 | 01:00

The Guardian piece isn't bad, actually, and the corporate lawyers don't come out looking very good from it, largely due to their own crass statements. That said, they don't come off half as bad as the bankers, who really sound quite loathsome.

Anonymous -07 Aug 2008 | 01:00

It would appear to be a week of trousers ...

At a time when this article refers to the fact that partners are out of touch when it comes to real-world income, we also see that lawyers are being laid off.

Why? Because law firms have no decent reserves laid aside for the 'tough' times - the reason being they've 'trousered' all the cash.

And this is not "the politics of envy", more a comment on the fact that law firms do not seem to be able to manage the peaks and troughs of business as well as other professionals, driven as they are by the league table syndrome.

As at the same time as partners' pockets are bulging with cash, it seems that aspiring partners are making room by not being able to keep certain other things in their trousers ...

All in all a bad week for morality in the legal profession.

Anon -07 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Here's a counter agrument: my next door neighbour is a plumber and he drives a BMW 5 Series.

Morality of the story? It's about seizing the opportunities you have and making the most of them, not sitting on your lazy bums and telling other people what your opportunities should be.

Unjust rewards? Trying telling my neighbour that...

anon -08 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Rather sad when a person needs to justify what they earn legally. I agree that someone with a better background has better opportunity, but I cant seem to agree that, in Britain, if you are from an “average background” you do not have any doors opening for you. You will find a mix of people from all backgrounds in the partner population. Whilst one cannot claim that life is unfair and it should be a dog-eat-dog world, one cannot be punished for being financially successful.

Also, comparisons of whether you work 10 times harder than teachers, is too simplistic and unjustified. The society does not sympathise with a lawyer or banker falling ill or dying of a heart attack – the view then, is that the individual choose that lifestyle for herself/himself. Similarly , if you do not choose to come into the city and do not make the money someone else made, it is your choice.

Needless to state that if you are rich, you need to give back to the society in one form or another. However, it is definitely wrong to say that you should not be earning that much money.

Anonymous -08 Aug 2008 | 01:00

In response to Billy Ocean - I am a legal secretary working for a large city law firm. I come from a very rural, large council-house family and had no idea when I was at my comprehensive school what solicitors did or that corporate lawyers even existed, let alone have any idea that I could have aspired to be one. However, having now spent the last 25 years or so working for lawyers (both inside and outside London) I have found that the home counties-private school-rugby club-oxbridge-training contract-associate-partner types are by far and the best type of lawyers to work for, even with their somewhat capitalistic views (in fact it is quite amusing to wind them up and set them going - all I have to say is what a great thing the NHS is to one of my team and off he goes). Their skills are nothing to do with being more intelligent than people from poorer backgrounds, but more to do with having a natural way of dealing with their staff which is not too familiar but still friendly, whereas the comprehensive school types are far more aggressive but also much more defensive. In fact the only lawyer that made me cry came from a council house background. The partner I work for believes that the private school system is really there to provide fodder for the city firms and that the schools tend to work in a similar way to the systems at city firms. The kids in private schools learn how to mix in social situations, they are taught to understand art, opera and things that you just do not learn at a comprehensive. Private schools definitely do provide a better training ground for the better-paid jobs, but in a way, even though they all earn more than I do, I feel quite sorry for them because they seem to have less choice over the direction of their lives and have the pressure of a greater expectation of success from their families but also from society.

Anon -08 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Read Giles Coren's take on the fearless twosome, All the lawns are manicured in Polly Toynbee land, in Times Online this morning. Cannot be bettered.

Wilks -09 Aug 2008 | 01:00

I don't know anything about David Walker, but I would treat any book authored by Polly Toynbee with a fair degree of suspicion. Some people might describe her as a left-wing ideologue. For me, she's just a tiresome journalist who believes that no problem exists that can't be fixed through massive state spending and, if necessary, punitive taxation.

Incidentally, the conclusion that City lawyers and bankers are "less intelligent, less intellectually inquisitive" etc. is hardly surprising. My personal experience, at least as far as lawyers are concerned, is that most of them are competent with a reasonable level of intelligence, but that very few are exceptional and some are downright thick. But so what if we don't spend the day philosophising about social and economic issues or waxing lyrical about literature or the meaning of life? We do actually facilitate important transactions and make a significant contribution to the economy of this country. What contribution the likes of journalists such Polly Toynbee make to our society - apart from fomenting ill-informed debate - is not always clear to me.

Matthew -10 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Anon: "if you are from an 'average background' you do not have any doors opening for you" - what utter nonsense. Whilst it's fair to say 'average' people don't benefit from the same advantages as the private school/Oxbridge/daddy's-a-partner brigade, you have to take responsibility for making (or opening) your own doors. I come from an average/comprehensive school/no industry contacts background and just had to work that little bit harder to break into a decent City firm. People who whinge about the privileged few making law inaccessible to everyone else need to accept responsibility for themselves and focus their efforts on standing out from the crowd rather than complaining.

Anonymous -11 Aug 2008 | 01:00

I agree with the authors to the extent that those interviewed seem to posses a misguided sense of self-entitlement. However, most human beings do - it's just much easier to criticise the privileged because they have more. This is not a justification for the attitudes demonstrated in the interview. Where I take issue with the piece is with its reliance on a comparison between law and other industries such as manufacturing. This is not a fair comparison. Law firms are highly elitist organisations; the minimum standard of a fee earner at a top international firm is far greater than the minimum standard you will find in most manfucturing jobs. This again isn't an arrogant comment: most companies are far more diverse than most law firms: there are a far greater range of jobs to be done. A consequence of this is that as a proportion of the overall fee-earners at a top international firm earning say over £100,000 is going to be close to 100%, whereas the proportion of employees at say the worlds largest toy manufacturing company who earn over £100,000 will probably just be restricted to the executives - most middle management won't even see that. By contrast the CEO of such a company will probably secure an income vastly higher than any lawyer since as a company most of the profit is divided between the executives and the shareholders, in a law firm the partners hold the equity and so their share represents both. If anything the fact that there is less disparity between partner and associate pay is evidence of a more egalitarian structure of running a business. The reason that the minimum pay is so high is because of the minimum standard which means that people with those skills are in short supply and therefore in a better position to negotiate their remuneration. Comparing the legal sector to a sector such a manufacturing could only be fairly done if 100% of the manufacturers' employees were on an executive level. To compare the two as they stand and suggest that the importance of the city to the GDP is exaggerated for the purpose of justifying elavated pay is misleading.

Another point to note is that law firms have huge attrition rate problems. This is because in order to qualify many students have to borrow excessive debts and will need a high paid job to pay them off. As soon as they have many of these people will leave, many of whom will seek employment in the public and charity sectors thereby giving something back to the community as a whole. Those who stick around either do so because they love their job or they love the money, therefore if you interview senior people the views are likely to be polarised into those two categories and is not therefore truly representative. All the author's have succeeded in doing is going out and finding the worst examples of high earners. You could do the same with any profession: i'm sure if you interviewed the worst doctors the findings would be shocking, the same for the worst teachers etc.

The fact is that our economic model relies on privatising gains in order to maximise productivity. The benefit of this is more money for the state overall, the negative effect is that it allows individuals to reap excessive rewards and drive a division between societies rich and poor. The real question is whether its better to have a bigger gap but better minimum living standards for the worst off or a smaller gap and lower living standards for the worst off. The report made reference to the percentage increase between rich and poor but did not offer any statistic as to whether and by how much the poorest of societies lives have improved. In other words it merely offered us a picture of the costs of our economic system without giving us a picture of the benefits.

Anonymous -11 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Everything you need to know about Polly Toynbee is set out below (from the Devil's Kitchen blog):

"This is a woman who owns a villa in Tuscany to which she frequently flies and still lectures the rest of us about our CO2 emissions; this is the woman who demanded that we throw open the books and see what everybody earns and then refused to disclose her own whopping salary; this is the woman who sent her children to private schools but insists that we should all send ours to state schools; this is the woman who demands that we pay more taxes and abase ourselves before the state, whilst ensuring that she — pulling down a salary beyond the dreams of avarice for most people in this country — has adequate funds to be able to buy her way out of the hellhole that she would construct for us."

Jonathan -11 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Agree that Giles Coren's article in Saturday's Times was unbeatable. I am sure Polly was spitting up her muesli when she read it. Polly Toynbee's views are archaic or just pure fantasy on her part. There are lots of partners who have been to state schools - and I know quite a few bankers too. There has been social mobility (although I am sure we could do better) in Britain for some time - after all, it is quite some time since we had a greengrocer's daughter as prime minister.

Ex-magic circle lawyer -11 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Becoming a partner is not about showing flair, insight, creativity or originality. It is about a willingness to work very long hours doing often very boring tasks, avoiding mistakes, saying the right things to the right people, being a competent plodder.

In my experience those who display too much spark, knowledge of the world beyond law, or individuality are stamped on pretty quickly in their careers.

This is just one (of many) reasons why City law firms are generally such deeply unhappy places.

Anon -11 Aug 2008 | 01:00

Sounds like you are speaking from personal experience there are Anon.... Got passed over for being just a little too krrrrrrrrrrraaaazzzy?

Utter twaddle. Nigel Boardman, Barry O'Brien etc. may be many things (maybe even some of the things Toynbee suggests) but it is ridiculous to suggest they are "competent plodders".

Bonkers Boris -13 Aug 2008 | 01:00

To the legal secretary who claims 'the kids in private schools learn how to mix in social situations, they are taught to understand art, opera and things that you just do not learn at a comprehensive' - As you state you've worked as a secretary for 25 years I'm guessing you'd be around the 45 year old mark, and although I don't know if you have state educated children of your own, you seem to have no idea about the quality of some state schools in the modern day. Although I come from a wealthy family, I was entirely state school educated (not in the Home Counties) by my parents choice, precisely so I would learn how to mix in social situations with a huge scope of people often radically different to each other and not grow up with such a blinkered view of society. I went on no less than 8 foreign art/music trips to Paris, Florence, Rome and the like, and had Music lessons where greats such as Mozart, Wagner and Pavarotti were a compulsory part of the curriculum until I was 16. I am only 26 but have worked hard and risen up the ranks quicker than my peers precisely because of my ability to relate to a variety of people on a variety of levels, rather than sit smirking at the minions in a little Oxbridge clique. It's those like yourselves with little modern social awareness who spend their whole career simply trying to curry favour with the 'What Ho's' who we really pity. What education/background/geography a lawyer has, although important to some firms, generally should not matter in the slightest, and it's people like you (which is very surprising considering your social background) who continue to feed that rift and cause books like this to be written in the first place. For the sake of your own integrity I suggest that unless you become a lawyer, you refrain from commenting on what makes a good one.

Amused Associate -16 Sep 2008 | 01:00

Coren's 'unbeatable' article is actually drivel. It pulls the tell-tale trick of the duff advocate in picking at the weakest bit of The Guardian's piece - namely the clunkier passages of Toynbee's over-earnest prose. At this, it scores some hits but it also totally fails to address the generally valid points the article raised regarding income inquality, the complacency of the rich and the lack of connection between the poor and super-privileged. Coren's nonsense reaches the height of absurdity towards the end where it concludes that the main thing holding back those from poor backgrounds isn't crap schools and lack of mentors to support their ambition, it's, er, people like Polly. There are many things holding back the kids from deprived inner-cities, but the writing of pompous lefty pundits isn't particularly high on the list.

And why lawyers should give Coren's piece the thumbs-up is beyond me - he also says that lawyers are intellectually average and have pointless and boring jobs.

Anonymous -19 Sep 2008 | 01:00

I agree with the authors to the extent that those interviewed seem to posses a misguided sense of self-entitlement.

cashback -29 Oct 2008 | 00:00