Opening Up Their Ranks

The central London headquarters of Linklaters is a scant 15 minutes’ walk from the working class borough of Hackney. But for Chaimaa Elazrak, 15, who lives in Hackney with her Moroccan immigrant parents, the firm’s offices at One Silk Street might just as well be light years away. Eyes wide open, Chaimaa and four of her schoolmates spent a week at Linklaters in October. They heard about the different career paths that lawyers can take, they learned how to conduct due diligence over the Internet, and they attended workshops on topics like presentation skills and corporate social responsibility.

The internship at Link­laters was a preview of what will happen at the roughly three dozen U.K. firms that have enlisted in a new legal diversity initiative called Prime. The project, which officially kicks off in the 2012–13 academic year, is the firms’ answer to criticism that too many of their lawyers come from elite backgrounds. The firms have pledged to offer internships to secondary school students between the ages of 14 and 18 as a steppingstone to a possible legal career, even if they aren’t yet sure they will go that route.