Social mobility has never been higher up the firm’s agenda. We’re proud to be one of the UK’s leading businesses for social mobility. The Social Mobility Employer Index 2020 ranked Browne Jacobson as fifth amongst the country’s leading employers, rising from 82nd place last year - making us one of the highest-ranked law firms in the country.
The Index highlights the employers who are doing the most to change how they find, recruit and advance talented employees from different social class backgrounds. Now in its fourth year, the Employer Index is the definitive benchmark of organisations committed to improving social mobility in the workplace. Despite the progress we’ve seen, the stark reality is that so much more must be done to reduce social inequality.
Why is Social Mobility important?
For each year a child spends in education, the gap between rich and poor grows, with the attainment gap accelerating year on year. Just one in ten students from poorer backgrounds are likely to achieve similar career success as those from wealthy backgrounds. This lack of upward mobility means that talent is often underdeveloped through lack of equal opportunity. Children from more prosperous families often benefit from more support and guidance from home and they can often access resources that their less advantaged peers cannot. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this discrepancy, as those children from less wealthy backgrounds have struggled to access the technology they need in order to continue their schooling remotely.
Informing and connecting students with available opportunities by linking them with potential employers is essential to improving social mobility. Students whose family members are from a professional background frequently have a far greater knowledge of how to go about finding opportunities and are more likely to have connections to help them secure work experience. Employers and schools are therefore critical when it comes to building alternative support networks for students who don’t easily have access to these advantages.
What are we doing to address Social Mobility?
In 2016, we removed our requirement for minimum A-level grades for our training contracts and now anonymise all application forms and CVs. We recognise the importance of exploring the variety of experiences and achievements that individuals can bring to Browne Jacobson, outside of traditional academic achievement. We’re delighted to be a member of RARE – an organisation committed to making elite professions more diverse. We use RARE’s contextual recruitment system predominantly for our training contract recruitment. This allows us to contextualise applications and measure against academic performance for a fairer process.
Browne Jacobson have a long-standing partnership with the National Literacy Trust. Whilst the focus is on helping students with their reading and writing skills, this partnership allows us to make the essential contacts between ourselves and students from disadvantaged backgrounds, showing them the career possibilities that are available to them.
We’ve set up FAIRE (Fairer Access into Real Experience) to revolutionise the way law firms recruit future talent and grow an industry-wide culture of inclusivity. FAIRE aims to support social mobility, offering students equal access to work experience and career insights that can pave the way for a career in the legal sector. We recently held the UK’s biggest virtual student law careers event in partnership with Young Professionals, with 7,000 attendees joining on the first day alone, and over 10,000 participants signing up across the UK. The event pro-actively targeted schools in every social mobility cold spot. 62% of attendees were from lower socio-economic postcodes and 52% were from Black, Asian or Minority ethnic communities.
The event was aimed at 16-19 year olds and offered an insight into the working environment of a national law firm, exploring not just law but the various career options available, such as marketing, finance, IT and HR.
This was the first event of many under Browne Jacobson’s FAIRE initiative, which has been devised by our Recruitment Manager, Tom Lyas. FAIRE underpins Browne Jacobson’s commitment to social mobility, offering students from diverse backgrounds a greater opportunity to break into the legal industry. Read more about the initiative via our FAIRE hub.
For more information about our commitment to social mobility and how we’re committed to embedding this across Browne Jacobson, please follow the links below: