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International Edition

ITV and Slaughters team up for PRIME social mobility scheme

ITV has teamed up with Slaughter and May to become the latest corporate legal team to back the PRIME social mobility initiative, as the broadcaster opens talks with Yahoo! and Lloyds Banking Group about a potential in-house collaboration. ITV legal director Barry Matthews (pictured) has taken the lead designing a full work experience programme, which will see sixth form students given opportunities at both ITV and Slaughters, adapting the magic circle firm's existing initiatives, which include weekly one-to-one tutorials, after-school workshops and events offering career insight. Slaughters is one of the 23 founding members of PRIME, a cross-firm initiative aimed at boosting access to the legal profession for students from underprivileged backgrounds.
4 minute read

Legal Week

Mixed messages – what clients mean, and what law firms think they mean

What do clients want? As a lawyer, you are doing something wrong if you can't go a long way towards answering this question. But standing in a room full of senior City partners and general counsel debating the lack of diversity in the legal profession last week, it became apparent quite how nuanced the answer can be. The event – organised by Obelisk, a commercial venture aimed at getting senior City lawyers back into work, particularly after motherhood – looked to address the main issues hindering the rise of women to the top of leading law firms. For as much as the in-house community was quick to denigrate their less diverse private practice colleagues, law firm representatives countered that clients are doing little to help the situation: what clients say they want and what clients actually want are two different things.
5 minute read

International Edition

McDermott faces pregnancy discrimination claims from former associate

A former senior associate at McDermott Will & Emery has alleged she was unfairly dismissed after pregnancy-related medical problems forced her to take time off, an employment tribunal has heard. Cheng Tan worked as an intellectual property lawyer at the US firm's London office until she was made redundant in November last year, according to press reports. She is suing the firm for unfair dismissal, on the grounds of maternity discrimination and indirect age discrimination.
2 minute read

International Edition

Charity forged by College of Law sale hands out first law grants

The Legal Education Foundation (LEF) - the charitable arm spun out of last year's sale of the College of Law - has formally launched with a series of six grants to initiatives supporting pro bono, social mobility and access to justice. LEF - which has funds of approximately £200m generated by last April's sale of the College of Law's education and training business to Montagu Private Equity - was set up to continue the College's charitable activities in the wake of the takeover.
3 minute read

International Edition

Linklaters to target more universities in firmwide diversity drive

Linklaters has put together a new team to lead its diversity efforts alongside a push to ramp up the number of universities it targets for its graduate intake. The group, called the 'Diversity Action Team', is headed by corporate partner and co-chair of the firm's black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) network, Tom Shropshire, alongside counsel Paulette Mastin, London graduate recruitment partners Richard Hodgson and Simon Branigan and diversity partner Euan Clarke.
2 minute read

International Edition

Olswang targets female partner boost with flexi-work push and gender bias training

Olswang is urging all of its partners to attend unconscious bias training as part of a push to increase its proportion of female partners, as the firm looks to ramp up the use of flexible working. The UK top 30 firm has introduced training sessions to raise awareness of unconscious bias across all of its offices, with the scheme coming as part of a wider overhaul of its flexible working policy, which is now being made more readily available. Currently, 22% of lawyers and staff in its London and Thames Valley offices work flexibly, while internationally the figure is 20%, a quarter of whom are male.
2 minute read

International Edition

Travers settles with former trainee in pregnancy discrimination case

Travers Smith has reached a financial settlement with a former trainee who successfully brought a case against the firm after she was denied a permanent role when she fell pregnant during her final seat. Katie Tantum instructed law firm Leigh Day to launch her case in February after failing to gain a newly-qualified position in Travers' real estate department.
2 minute read

International Edition

The fight for fairness – what are law firms doing to tackle the gender pay gap?

Lawyers have a problem with equal pay – and it's a big one. More than 40 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women in private practice are paid a startling 26.7% less than their male counterparts. The finding, from a new Law Society study of solicitors' salaries in 2012, compares badly with the national picture: the law's gender pay gap is well over double the 9.6% difference between men and women's pay across the UK as a whole, as reported by the Office for National Statistics.
10 minute read

International Edition

Freshfields rolls out female mentoring scheme to international bases

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is rolling out a female associate mentoring scheme across its international offices as the firm continues its push to boost female partner numbers. The initiative, which is aimed at junior and mid-level female associates, initially launched in London in October last year and now has more than 60 associates signed up, equating to around one in three of the firm's junior to mid-level City ranks. More than 55 male and female partners, senior associates and counsel have signed up to act as mentors. Mentors and associates fill in a questionnaire to identify the areas they would like to discuss, with three suitable matches offered via an online platform. Associates can then choose which of the three individuals they would like to be mentored by over the next 12 months.
4 minute read

International Edition

Mother of all problems – firms still need to try harder when it comes to women

Sometimes law firms' efforts to boost female representation in the partnership can seem a little trite. We all know the statistics – more than half of new trainees are female and yet many City firms are struggling to get women to make up 20% of their partnerships, despite numerous initiatives in recent years to try to rectify the problem. And the higher up the chain you go the worse the problem inevitably becomes, meaning you don't even need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of female leaders of top 50 law firms. Mentoring, women's groups and flexible working are all now on offer to some degree at most firms in a bid to meet the challenge, with a few going further and introducing targets for the percentage of female partners they want or for women in management roles.
3 minute read

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