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Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance

Social mobility

Inclusion & diversity

Inclusion and diversity sit at the very heart of our vision and strategy. 'Be Inclusive' is one of the key principles of our Code of Conduct, and we are committed to creating an inclusive environment based on mutual respect, where everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed regardless of their background.

Social mobility (the movement of people up or down the socio-economic ladder or 'class' structure) threads between all of our diversity strands. Within the legal sector in particular, we feel it's an area that hasn't received enough attention in the past. We aim to change this by making social inclusion an everyday conversation at Clifford Chance.

Highlights

Clifford Chance Scholarship for Diverse Students in Europe

The Clifford Chance Scholarship for Diverse Students in Europe aims at improving social mobility within the legal sector, at ensuring that our workforce better represents the social and economic diversity across Continental Europe and increase inclusion in our law firm and in the legal sector in general. Hear more about Mimouna, one of our 2022 recipients.

Clifford Chance makes progress to improve social inclusion and access to the legal sector in the UK

UK

We're very proud to be a top 30 employer in The Social Mobility Foundation Employer Index - the leading authority on employer-led social mobility in the UK! Sam Muturi, Cathy Jones, and Toby Horner share their thoughts on Clifford Chance's progress with social inclusion:

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Virtual internships

Global

We recognise that there is a need in the market for open access, high quality meaningful work experience and as such we have an ongoing commitment to invest in democratising accessibility to meaningful development opportunities.

Our virtual work experience opportunities have been designed to support ambitions and give access to a broad range of in-depth materials through self-directed learning. They give unique exposure to build understanding of what being a lawyer actually entails and allows people to experience, first-hand, the responsibilities that come with the role.

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ACCESS Scheme

UK

Clifford Chance is proud to be a founding member of PRIME. Through PRIME, we are committed to ensuring that anyone who wants to enter the world of law has an equal chance to do so, regardless of their background. For many years, obtaining work experience in the legal sector depended largely on who you know rather than what you know. PRIME members have made a commitment to change this by providing fair access to work experience. Our response to this is our bespoke, award-winning, two-year development programme for year 12 or equivalent students - Clifford Chance ACCESS.

This pioneering programme consists of twelve different components, each focused around specific core areas of personal and professional development, culminating in the opportunity to secure a Training Contract.

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RISE

We need to be ambitious with our plans for social inclusion. We want to better understand social diversity across all levels of our firm and be in a position where we can report our class pay gap, alongside gender, LGBT+, ethnicity and disability. Collecting data is integral to our ability to publish our pay gaps and we encourage everyone to consider providing it.

With RISE, our social mobility affinity network, we want to raise awareness of issues relating to social mobility, engage our people, and produce targeted initiatives to address imbalances and dismantle the barriers that can prevent individuals from succeeding at our firm.

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Our insights

The latest points of view from our people on our responsible business activities

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