Our people around the world

'One issue is how to retain our women lawyers as they become more senior. We are looking at ways of how we can address this issue.'
Caroline Stroud, global HR partner, member of our diversity leadership team, CSR strategy group and community and pro bono committee

We seek to attract, develop and retain outstanding individuals from around the world, with all kinds of backgrounds, skills and experiences.

Overall, there has been little change in the profile of our firm since our first corporate social responsibility (CSR) report for 2004/2005. Fifty-seven per cent of our people worldwide are female, although a majority of the lawyers are male. Demographic changes take time: we aspire to greater diversity at all levels within the firm and are supporting and exploring initiatives to help us achieve this. These include mentoring, flexible work schemes, networks and affinity groups, and diversity training.

Graph of Gender by practice area

Our efforts to encourage and promote greater diversity are wide-ranging, although the retention and promotion of women is a particular issue given the high number of women we recruit at trainee level. We are working to improve our understanding of what practices and cultures can be changed to encourage female lawyers to stay longer at the firm and to increase the proportion of female partners through our diversity working group, our network of CSR partners, and our associate engagement group.

Graph of Gender by region

1 Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bratislava, Brussels, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Vienna
2 Beijing, Dubai, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo
3 New York, Washington, DC

Through our membership of Opportunity Now and participation in Network for Knowledge, we also hope to learn from the experiences of the many other businesses that, like us, are keen to have more women in senior positions.

Greater diversity

We are pleased to see that 20 per cent of our current trainees and 27 per cent of our future trainees are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. This reflects the efforts of our trainee recruitment team to encourage 'non-traditional' applications. We hope that, in time, this will help to improve the diversity of our firm at all levels.

There has been little change in the overall age profile of the people who work here since our first report and the majority of our people worldwide are under the age of 40. Given this demographic, we find that some of our people – perhaps because they are not near family or long-standing support networks, or are starting new families – can be subject to pressures and strains. As a result, we believe that mentoring and appraisal should be geared towards acknowledging wider issues such as these and that managers should be encouraged to find solutions that suit the individual concerned.

Currently, we have more information about the people who work in our London office than we have about our other offices. In future, we will benefit from the introduction of a global human resources system that will enable us to gather more information about the people who work in all our offices.

Find more information about our lawyers in the about us section of this report and from www.freshfields.com/people.