People & Diversity

Career management and beyond

We recognise that our client work demands a high level of personal performance. People understand this and it is, in part, what attracted them to the firm and motivates them to deliver to the high standards we expect. We aim to give our people every opportunity to build careers that match their abilities and ambitions and that are fulfilling and enjoyable. This means ensuring they are getting the right work to build their skills and experience and that their workload is manageable.

We are putting in place practical measures to ensure that progress is fairly monitored, performance recognised and rewarded and time managed effectively. The career milestones programme, launched in 2009, is helping our associates and the partners who lead them to analyse individual performance, assess training needs and understand career progress more clearly. Elsewhere we are piloting some different approaches to working patterns that support the individual, yet meet the needs of our clients. We recognise that flexibility in the working week is extremely important to many of our people and we are determined to find suitable solutions.

The firm made a big investment in 2009 to become a better ex-employer too. Our new web-based alumni network allows us to keep in close contact with those who are continuing their careers elsewhere.

Increasing the number of women partners

Freshfields has to become more gender-diverse as an organisation. We have made good progress and recruit an even ratio of women to men. At a senior level, though, we recognise that we have some way to go. So we are actively looking at ways to make partnership an attractive prospect for a higher number of our female lawyers. To do that, we will have to ensure the life of a partner is one equally attractive to both genders.

The firm's senior leadership has approved a strategy to address the issues affecting retaining and advancing women lawyers, and is rolling out these action steps: top level sponsorship of a culture that supports promoting women; establishing women's networks across our international offices, gender-specific coaching, support for flexible working (for all - men and women); and developing an industry-leading maternity programme.

We are setting ourselves tough targets. From a business perspective, diversity makes sense. It delivers innovation, increases competitive advantage and reduces the cost of attrition. More importantly, creating truly equal opportunity is the right thing to do.

Recruitment and education

It is no secret that we look to employ the brightest and the best. But we do not want simply to harvest talent. We see our relationship with the education sector as a real and enduring partnership – and we give back to those institutions that supply us and the wider working world with brilliant people. Freshfields recruits on campus in many countries, but we have also built collaborative educational programmes with schools and law colleges.

We believe it is essential that education and the profession feed off one another – and that training is kept current and market-tested. So we do all we can to share our experience and acquired expertise with the lawyers and businesspeople of the future.

Our partners teach electives to law and business students in France, Germany and the UK – and we have sponsorship relationships with several major schools. The students we engage know more about life as a lawyer thanks to our involvement and their education is boosted by the 'live' experience we bring.