We work with a number of organisations to ensure that we are recruiting from a diverse pool of candidates; this includes working closely with organisations such as Rare Recruitment and Bright Network to attract training contract and vacation scheme applications from young people from black and ethnic minority (BME) communities.
Macfarlanes was also one of the first signatories to Rare Recruitment’s Contextual Recruitment System which enables us to understand the context of a candidate’s experiences and qualifications. This is a helpful tool because it shows a candidate’s A-Level grades against the average for their school, as well as other social mobility factors, helping to level the playing field between candidates from different backgrounds
Legal CORE
Legal CORE (Collaboration on Race and Ethnicity), is an initiative launched by Macfarlanes and seven other law firms to help tackle race and ethnicity challenges within the legal sector. The aim of Legal CORE is to increase the representation of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) individuals in private practice by focusing on the retention and promotion of ethnically diverse talent.
Conversations about Race
We run a Conversations about Race programme. This programme is an important part of our progress in relation to building a more representative partnership. The first part of the programme comprises five short videos featuring members of our management board and external experts. The second part has been set up as a series of mandatory in person workshops, known as “Conversations about our culture”.
Race Fairness Commitment
Macfarlanes was one of 17 initial law firm signatories to the Race Fairness Commitment (RFC). The RFC is data driven and commits law firms to measuring things like “application to interview” and “interview to offer” rates for different ethnic groups, as well as monitoring how people from different ethnic groups progress through firms.
We have also been recognised as an advanced employer by Investing in Ethnicity.