Were you from the first generation of your immediate family to experience a university education? And what type of school did you attend feepaying, non-fee paying or an international school?

City law firm Linklaters believes that asking such questions to gauge the social mobility of potential recruits will be key to broadening its future talent pool. Now a year into gathering the data from applicants and its employees, the law firm has established an initial benchmark for the social mobility of its current workforce.

For the first time, Linklaters has published statistics revealing the social mobility of its employees from partners to trainees well ahead of new rules set by the Legal Services Board (LSB) that will require all employers within the legal profession to do so by December 2012.

“By starting to monitor the socio-economic background of people within the organisation and people who apply, I hope that in time we will be able to measure our progress and the success of our efforts to try and attract people from non-traditional backgrounds to apply to work at the firm,” Felix Hebblethwaite, global diversity manager at Linklaters, told Recruiter.

An analysis is underway of the data which has been returned to date by potential recruits. “What’s going to be really useful for us is that we are able to validate the recruitment processes that we currently have in place…to see that we’re effective in driving through change,” he said.

“We need to ensure that we are recruiting the best talent, from the broadest possible pool because, at the end of the day, that is what this is all about.”

Along with social mobility statistics, the LSB will require legal employers to publish data about age, race, gender and disabilities. The LSB will not require religion and sexual orientation data.