The Lawyer has reported that a study undertaken by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation compared the IQ scores of lawyers born in 1958 to those born in 1970.

The older generation of lawyers proved to be 11 per cent more intelligent than the average person, while the younger lawyers were just 8 per cent more intelligent. By comparison, there was just a 1 per cent gap between the two age groups for other professionals.

However despite these findings, the legal profession is becoming more and more elitist, with lawyers born in 1970 coming from, on average, a more privileged background than their 1950s counterparts.

The average family income for lawyers born in 1958 was 22 per cent higher than the average person, but that had risen to 27 per cent for the 1970s-born lawyers. Meanwhile, the percentage of lawyers coming from a social housing background had dropped from 3.7 per cent in the 1958s group to just 1.6 per cent in the 1970s group.

- By Zoe Lyon