What is the reason for setting up the REACH scheme?
We, like many other organisations, share the same challenges around the recruitment, progression and retention of black people. It’s a massive challenge within recruitment as well. No-one is really doing anything to grow the talent pool or to think about removing any barriers to inclusion within the legal workforce. So, we sat with our executive sponsor for race, ethnicity, our head of recruitment, and asked what we could do to make this better. We've all got the same challenges, not recruiting in the way that we should be. What can we do?
Why does that matter to Browne Jacobson?
Diversity? Having diversity of thoughts, having diversity of people within the firm, being able to offer more diverse, innovative solutions to our clients. We need diversity.
It all goes back to that, and the legal sector is, I don't think I speak out of turn here, years behind many other sectors in terms of inclusion and diversity. There are still many barriers to entry, still lots of barriers to progression, even when you're in the industry. So, we have an absolute ambition to be at the forefront of society's biggest issues. And one of them is specifically around ethnic minorities.
We had a very poor representation of black lawyers within the firm, and we, like many other firms, were struggling to recruit, and we didn't have that representation within the firm to begin with to be able to progress people equitably. So, that's really where the REACH mentoring program came up as an opportunity to disrupt that. To ask what do we need to do to grow a sustainable pipeline black talent in the future? There are some fantastically talented black aspiring lawyers out there. How do we even get on their radar as a firm?
What was the first step with setting up the program? Are you trying to access people straight from universities? Is that the idea?
Yeah. Initially, I think we started with 12 individuals, and we opened it up to four or five different universities that we knew had a high percentage of black students interested in careers in law. We ran an application process for those universities, and each would maybe submit three, four or five students for consideration, and we would decide, by going through a short-listing exercise, who would get a place in the program.
The initial program started out as six months of mentoring. Each student would be paired with a mentor who would be a lawyer or a barrister in our firm, from our REACH network - our race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage network - and within those six months, they would get two weeks paid work experience at one of our UK offices.
And peppered throughout the program are various skill sessions, so everything from CV building to presentation skills, to how to negotiate. All sorts of brilliant skill sessions. And the idea was that at the end of it these students come out with access to lawyers and legal professionals that they didn't have before, a higher degree of confidence and skills they would have learned throughout those six months, a fantastic mentor and mentoring relationship that most of them have continued throughout. It gives them access to a profession that's not traditionally a route they may have taken.
Is that the crux of the problem - that it’s not even considered as a realistic career choice?
No, it's not. And that's it. This program gives us the opportunity to be very intentional about seeking that talent out because there are tons of people out there. And as much as it's about nurturing the people who already want to go into law and aspire to be lawyers and all of that, a lot of this is just showcasing the kinds of careers you can have.
So, we're very, very conscious about the about the kind of outreach that we do as well and making sure that we're not just appealing to people who already have a foundational knowledge of the legal sector, or who are going to university and on that path already.
For the first time this year, we actually removed that and completely opened up access, so that anybody could apply to be on the program, you don’t need to have any qualifications or experience beforehand or go to university. And it really enhanced the program.
We've got a real diversity in our cohorts, with 20 people a year now, which is absolutely fantastic. And for the first time this year as well, we partnered with one of our clients, a big multinational organisation, who really get behind what we're trying to do, but don't have the infrastructure to do a program like this themselves.
They gave us four mentors from their organisation to pair up with some of our mentees. And it added a really nice dimension to the program this year, because it also exposed those mentees to alternative careers in law as well, such as working in-house rather than for a law firm. So, the program continues to evolve, and we think every year about new and innovative ways to attract different people and really try to enhance and enrich it.