Law firm backs empowering and inspiring Black Young Professionals Network Conference

Browne Jacobson is a proud sponsored partner of this year’s Black Young Professionals (BYP) Network Leadership Conference.

The virtual two-day event takes place on 28 and 29 October and supports the network’s commitment to ‘changing the black narrative’. The event focuses on empowering and equipping young black professionals to become future leaders within their organisations and is a platform for young black professionals and students to make long lasting and impactful career and community connections.

The event’s stellar speaking line up is made up of influential industry leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers from across the globe, including: creative innovator & tech entrepreneur and musician, will.i.am; poet, Suli Breaks; global carbon programme lead for SHELL, Marcus-Alexander Neil; Global Business Partner for TikTok, Mark-Anthony Johnson; and presenter, producer and Youtuber, M Lavontelle amongst others.

Browne Jacobson will welcome a host of aspiring young black legal professionals to its virtual recruitment stall at the event. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage and network with members of the firm’s recruitment team and volunteers from its internal Race Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage community (REACH), gaining legal career insight and an overview of Browne Jacobson’s people culture, brand, clients and business.

Browne Jacobson has established a national reputation for its commitment to promoting greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and is currently ranked as one of the top five businesses in the UK by the Social Mobility Foundation. The firm also recently won ‘The Innovation in Diversity & Inclusion Award’ for its work in promoting social mobility in the legal profession at the 2021 Financial Times (FT) Innovative Lawyers Awards and also scooped ‘The Innovation Award’ at the fifth annual UK Social Mobility Awards 2021.

Since 2016 the firm has implemented a series of ground-breaking initiatives including revolutionising its trainee recruitment processes by removing academic barriers, anonymising applications and focusing its outreach work on social mobility ‘cold spots’. In 2021 it launched FAIRE (Fairer Access into Real Experience) – a unique programme offering work experience opportunities to candidates specifically from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the same year it also staged the UKs largest virtual legal careers event for over 7000 young people as part of FAIRE.

In the Summer, the firm also launched its mandatory “Conscious Inclusion” and ‘Anti-racism’ training programme which so far has been delivered to its partnership and will continue to cascade out to internal teams across the firm next year.

The BYP network was founded by CEO, Kike Oniwinde in 2016. Kike formed the network in response to the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests and her own experiences of taking up a scholarship at the University of Florida where she struggled to form connections with other young black professionals and students because of the lack of representation these groups had.

Kike Oniwinde commented:

“We are super excited to welcome Browne Jacobson to the BYP Network Leadership Conference. This is our third year running it and it’s set to be as big and impactful as ever.

“This year’s theme is #CollaborationIsKey as part of our ‘Decade of Proactive Change’ and it is our way of helping future leaders connect and learn to supercharge their career. Representation from the law industry is super important as we want our members to discover opportunities from training contracts to product and business development roles at Browne Jacobson.” 

Browne Jacobson partner, Bridget Tatham who is an Executive Sponsor for Race and an active member of the firm’s REACH community added:

“We are incredibly proud to support BYP, its allies and its community partners on this fantastic event which strives to elevate black professionals and promotes equity and equality in the workplace. These themes really resonate with us as a firm.

“We are passionate about enabling our people to be authentic by striving to create an inclusive, diverse and vibrant workspace where everyone is celebrated for their differences. In doing so, our aim is to ensure that everyone has fair and equitable access opportunities ahead.”