Inclusion and CSR

Open

/ˈəʊpən/ people
The ethos that makes us who we are

For us, a fair culture is one which respects the contributions which can be made by talented people from all backgrounds – people with differing views and experiences. It’s also about providing an inclusive and supportive working environment. We firmly believe that our culture significantly enhances our ability to provide a service of quality to our clients.

This culture of fairness underpins our recruitment practice and guides our policies in relation to the development and retention of our people. They are our biggest asset and vital to our continued success. Our objective is to develop our next generation of lawyers from an even wider talent pool. Our clients come from a range of backgrounds and cultures and it is important that our people do too.

Initiatives

As part of our commitment to diversity and to enable us to attract people from all sorts of backgrounds, we have partnered with a number of programmes. These include:

Recruitment

In addition to our partnerships, we have adapted our recruitment processes to ensure that we recruit the best candidates regardless of their background. We do not have any preconceptions about who you are or where you’re from. We want people who are academically strong, with determination and drive. For us, it’s your potential that really counts.

Application blind

We were one of the first law firms to ensure that the vast majority of our assessment processes for both our vacation schemes and training contracts are scored application blind. This means that, aside from parts of the process which require a review of your application , such as the application interview itself, you will be assessed by people who must judge your candidacy based on your actual performance on the day. We believe this promotes greater fairness.

Contextual recruitment system

We adopted Rare’s contextual recruitment tool to help us understand each applicant’s achievements in the context in which they have been gained. We understand that not every candidate’s achievements look the same on paper and we want to recruit the best people, from every background. This helps us to promote meritocracy and diversity in our candidate selection process. 

Corporate social responsibility

CSR is a fundamental part of our firm’s culture and integral to our belief that every person should have access to justice. We believe in our wider responsibilities to the communities in which we live and work and also to the environment around us. We strongly encourage all members of staff to support our various initiatives throughout the year. To find out more, visit our Corporate social responsibility page.