Social mobility

With talent from lower socio-economic and minority backgrounds still hugely under-represented in the legal profession, we are passionate about finding innovative ways to change things.

Reviewing social mobility workforce data allows us to track our progress and design initiatives to increase socio-economic diversity. Our dedicated social mobility team are delivering a new social mobility strategy which will widen access to our firm and the wider legal industry.

Workforce data

Our workforce should be reflective of the clients we serve and the communities we operate in. We strive to be at the forefront of society’s biggest issues and use our position and influence to offer equality of opportunity for all. As such, our aspiration is to be the most diverse, equitable and inclusive law firm in the UK and Ireland, creating a workplace in which everyone can thrive and succeed. To support this, we are transparent about the social mobility data of our workforce.

Parental occupation

Type of school attended

Free school meal eligibility

First in family to attend university

Pay gap data

In our pay gap reports we report more broadly than the mandatory reporting requirements by including ethnicity, disability, and social mobility as well as gender.

We are encouraged by the progress we have made since we first published our pay gaps in early 2018 but recognise our journey to build a diverse, equitable and inclusive firm continues, and that we must strive to ensure the progress we make is enduring. We aim to continue to reduce our social mobility pay gap (working class vs professional) at a similar rate as what we have done the previous two years.  

In social mobility, to further close our pay gaps we will be:

1. Auditing our people processes with a socio-economic lens to identify barriers for staff from lower socio-economic backgrounds to progress. 
2. Rolling out our new accent bias and socio-economic awareness training within the firm to address cultural barriers. 
3. Increasing salary transparency on job adverts to remove barriers for experienced candidates.  

Recruitment 

At Browne Jacobson we believe the legal profession needs all voices to reflect the society it serves, so we’re passionate about finding innovative ways to attract diverse talent. People from lower socio-economic and minority backgrounds are still hugely underrepresented in the legal profession. We want to change this.

To support this mission we are working hard to ensure that we recruit talent from a socio-economically diverse talent pool by setting a target to continue to attract applicants to our early careers programmes above the national average (39%).  We also have a target to ensure that we continue to progress socio-economically diverse candidates through these recruitment processes above the national average (39%),  through to offer. We have met this target for the last two years.  

We want to break down barriers to accessing a legal career and help everyone - whatever their background - get a foot in the door.

We’ve set up FAIRE (Fairer Access Into Real Experience) to revolutionise the way law firms encourage diverse talent into the profession, and to grow an industry-wide culture of inclusivity. FAIRE aims to support social mobility, offering students equal access to paid work experience that can pave the way for a career in the legal sector. We ringfence 50% of the places for talent from lower socio-economic backgrounds but also set a target of offering 80% to support us to target the right talent pools. 85% of FAIRE attendees have been from lower socio-economic backgrounds so far.