Apply now!Diversity and inclusion at Stephenson Harwood
Our vision is to be known as an inclusive and diverse firm, where all our people feel they can be themselves and thrive at work. Our people are our biggest asset. We want Stephenson Harwood to be a place where colleagues can do their best work in a team that values the unique contributions that they bring.
Our Belonging, Inclusion and Diversity strategy focuses on culture, leadership, talent management and recruitment. We partner with a range of organisations to help us to create the diverse and inclusive workplace that we strive to be. Partners include Stonewall, The Business Disability Forum, The Valuable 500, Aspiring Solicitors and Rare Recruitment, MyPlus Student Recruitment, Working Families and more.
Access to the profession
Our commitment to diversity and inclusion starts with young people, often long before they would come to work for us. We want to widen access to the legal profession, ensuring that young people who don't have networks in law have access to our office and our people, and to remove financial barriers to the profession. Examples include:
- Our Bright Sparks programme provides work experience for Year 12 students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, including workshops on commercial awareness, insight into the legal profession, confidence building workshops and interview skills sessions.
- Our scholarship programme, open to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, offers £15,000 per year to cover the costs of university fees and contribute to living expenses. Recipients will also be given a mentor from the firm, invited to insight days and skills workshops, provided with work experience, and guaranteed a place at an assessment centre for a training contract.
Inclusive recruitment
We work hard to reach diverse candidates, providing the support they need to apply for roles at our firm. Examples include:
- We use the Rare contextual recruitment system as part of our training contract, vacation scheme, solicitor apprentice, and scholarship selection processes. The tool contextualises the academic performance of applicants, helping us to identify ‘stand-out’ candidates, regardless of background. We have also partnered with Rare to support all those involved in future talentrecruitment to combat unconscious bias. We provide training through Hemisphere, a product that blends videos of real candidates at interview, animations, and interactive exercises to help interviewers gain an insight into their biases and what they can do to tackle them.
- For the last two years we have hosted a Disability Open Day which aims to attract disabled talent to apply for our training contract opportunities. The open day provides information about the strategy of the firm, our sector focuses, application hints and tips and how we are working towards ensuring that the firm is inclusive to disabled talent. Additionally, as a member of the UK Government's Disability Confident Scheme, we will offer an interview to disabled applicants for our training contract, vacation scheme and apprenticeship programmes who meet the essential selection criteria for our roles.
Fostering inclusion
We know we need to foster an inclusive culture, where all our people can be themselves and thrive at work. Our D&I employee networks are for, and run by, our people. They support members in many ways, including creating a sense of belonging by celebrating diversity, connecting people across the business and working with the wider community.
In the UK we have the following networks:
- SHout (LGBTQ+)
- Stephenson Harwood Advancing Racial and Ethnic Diversity (SHARED)
- Gender equality
- Enable (Disability and neurodivergence)
- Social mobility
- Family and carers network
- Jewish network
- Muslim network
- Christian network
Advertisement
Advertisement
