Solicitor chiefs launched a diversity access scheme (DAS) two decades ago to support individuals who faced social, educational, financial or personal obstacles in qualifying in the profession.
Since then the Law Society scheme has helped about three hundred people to become solicitors by supporting them through the legal practice course (LPC) and the more recent solicitors qualifying examination (SQE) with scholarships, mentoring and work experience.
Gary Steel, 36, who was given a scholarship in 2016, says that he would not have been able to qualify without the “life-changing” award. He grew up in Skegness, where his father worked as a bingo caller at Butlin’s and his mother was a cook in a café.
Steel left school at 14, worked in several jobs and trained to be a chef before sneaking into his partner’s law lectures, when he became hooked on the subject.
With a reading age of ten, he enrolled with the Open University and six years later gained a law degree. The DAS scholarship enabled him to complete the LPC at Nottingham Trent University and, after securing a training contract at Derbyshire Law Centre through the Legal Education Foundation, he qualified in 2023.
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He now works as a specialist housing, employment and discrimination solicitor at the centre, where he says: “I am at the coal face of access to justice and I love it.”
Kiera O’Connor, 23, from Hertfordshire, was given a scholarship in 2023. She is undertaking the LPC at Hertfordshire University while working part time as a paralegal and applying for training contracts.
O’Connor’s mother was just 18 when O’Connor was born and as a result of her mother’s poor health O’Connor cared for her and her younger siblings from an early age. As a consequence of the family’s unstable home life, which included periods of homelessness, O’Connor was permanently excluded from her “extremely run-down” school the year before her GCSEs.
“I was eager to learn and build a life different from what I had experienced,” says O’Connor, who, having successfully presented submissions on her own behalf to a tribunal when she was 13, knew she was interested in law.
She still cares for her siblings and does not have settled accommodation. “Due to all I have going on and my background, without the scholarship I would never have been in the position to fund the course and embark on my journey to becoming a solicitor,” she says.
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Frances Onyinah, 27, a “first-generation black Brit with Ghanaian roots”, was given a scholarship in 2021. Her mother was a mental health midwife and her father was a bus driver.
She studied modern history and politics at Essex University before completing the law conversion course at BPP Law School. With limited finances or connections in law, Onyinah found her career path an “uphill battle”. But she is now a trainee solicitor at the employment law firm Cole Khan.
State-educated Harry Payne, 22, from Tyne and Wear, studied history at Newcastle University. His father is a taxi driver and his mother works for Citizens Advice.
Born in a borough with one of the highest poverty rates in the UK, Payne says that most people there were not expected to go to university, let alone become a lawyer and he “often felt looked down upon and that my voice was not important enough to be listened to”.
But, with a scholarship, he is studying for the SQE2 and will begin a training contract at the City office of a US law firm, Squire Patton Boggs, in 2025. “I can unequivocally say that receiving the DAS award changed my life and I could not recommend it enough for potential solicitors from underrepresented backgrounds,” Payne says.
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The scheme is open to applicants living in England and Wales who have attended a non-fee-paying school, are part of the first generation of their family to attend higher education, or were eligible for free school meals. They must also not have more than £5,000 in savings, or access to family loans or financial gifts.
Applicants who do not meet two of those criteria may be eligible if they have faced or will face exceptional circumstances to pursue their studies as a result of their cultural background, health, disability, sex, gender identity, race, religion or other difficult personal circumstances.
Applications for this year’s scheme open on February 28 and close on April 13; see lawsociety.org.uk for more details and an application form.
