Our people around the world

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 2004/5. Fifty-seven per cent of our people worldwide are female, although most of our lawyers are male: 88 per cent of our partners and 54 per cent of other lawyers. Demographic changes take time to come, though. We aspire to greater diversity at all levels within the firm and are supporting and exploring initiatives to help us achieve this, including mentoring, flexible work schemes, networks and affinity groups, and diversity training. The associate working groups are due to report in early 2008.

Worldwide gender profile 2006/7

Worldwide gender profile 2006/7	Partners and principal consultants (per cent)	Associates (per cent)	Trainees (per cent)	Paralegals (per cent)	Business services (per cent)	Worldwide (per cent)
Female	12	40	54	56	78	57
Male	88	60	46	44	22	43
Total	100	100	100	100	100	100

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 new diversity working group, our network of CSR partners, and our associate engagement group and working groups.

Through our membership of Opportunity Now, 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.

We are pleased to have seen an increase in the number of black and minority ethnic people set to join our firm as trainee lawyers – at 18 per cent, this is above the Law Society’s 10 per cent target – and hope this will continue and help make our firm more reflective of the communities in which we operate.

There has been little change in the overall age profile of the people who work here since our first report. Seventy-four per cent of our people firm-wide are under the age of 40 years, with 21 per cent of our partners and 88 per cent of other lawyers in this age group. Given this demographic we find that some of our people are not near their families or longstanding support networks, or are starting new families, and that this can create pressures and strains. We believe that mentoring and appraisal should be geared towards acknowledging wider issues like 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 our offices.

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