We live in a world where the promise of advancement through hard work is omnipresent.

From childhood we hear: You can become anything you want.

You just have to make an effort.

On the one hand, with a look at the past, this is truer today than it used to be.

Differences are to be balanced out through BAföG, inclusion and targeted funding.

And for some, it actually works.

On the other hand: the “permeability rate” is nowhere near as high as the mantra “hard work always achieves your goal” suggests. In other words: if you come from an academic household, there is a high probability that you will also go to university. If, on the other hand, parents work in apprenticeships or have no school-leaving qualification, the path to university is still rocky and arduous. And the higher the desired level of training, the more difficult it will be. Out of a hundred non-academic children, around 21 begin studying. But of these hundred, on average, only one achieves a doctorate. For comparison: out of 100 university graduates, an average of 74 start a degree, ten of them are doing a doctorate.

Now, for God's sake, not everyone has to study and a degree is not the ticket to happiness either.

But nobody will deny that money, power and status in this and very many other countries in the world are closely linked to the level of education.

Elites among themselves

Not all studies are the same. To this day, “classic” courses such as law go hand in hand with a certain reputation and with elite thinking. And elites like to stay among themselves. I don't mean that the affluent children who mostly populate my law lecture hall - and to whom I also count myself, by the way - belong to a secret underground network à la Illuminati. Rather, I claim that there is a large majority of them who are at least a little ashamed of their privileges. We are all in favor of equal opportunities and fairness, but somehow we usually only come across versions of ourselves in the lecture - i.e. all the others whose white parents are also judges, engineers and doctors with 1.5 children and a beautiful house on the outskirts .

So why is it that entry and, in particular, advancement in law is so much more difficult for less privileged students without an academic background? I think part of the answer that is as simple as it is sobering is, it's all about the money. In my experience, law is a degree where very few people work on the side compared to other subjects. Now you might think: Sure, many don't need it. They prefer to be fed by mom and dad. And that's partly true, of course.

At the same time, however, it is also a subject that cannot be combined with regular employment as easily as others.

Especially in the first semesters.

Because the time required and the level of difficulty are simply very high.

This is not supposed to be self-pity.

But it's just like that: in the first semester we had two to three times as many hours per week as students in other subjects.

And while many undergraduate students study for one to two weeks for their exams, the law faculty's library is jam-packed five weeks before the exam date.

That doesn't mean that you can't work alongside your studies.

But it is an additional burden in a demanding course of study.

And thus a factor for social selection.

The thing with the reputation

What is also an important factor from my point of view, but one that cannot be easily measured, is the preservation of “social capital” from one generation to the next. What I mean by that is that the children of lawyers also study law more than the average. Or at least a subject with a comparable reputation. Lawyers traditionally enjoy a high reputation. And I claim that for the children of parents with high social status, whether consciously or not, it plays a role in the choice of study to be granted this status.

This thesis is of course a bit uncomfortable for all the enlightened middle-class law students who often do not feel really comfortable with this label. But I'm afraid that deep down in their hearts, many of them are much more afraid of social decline than they can admit. And so they combine both shame about their privilege and an above-average interest in receiving it. Which is why your choice of course often falls on law - or something comparable - above average.

At the same time, the study of law has already made a development towards more diversity in the last ten to fifteen years.

While the subject still took second top place in terms of social impermeability in 2005, the 2014 student survey found a slight decline in “academization” (read: academic child rate).

So it is to be hoped that the law clientele will continue to open up to students with different backgrounds.

A development from which society as a whole could benefit.

Because lawyers are often at the fore, whether in court or in the Bundestag.

It would be nice if the decision-makers of tomorrow didn't all have the same biography.