Community impact
Opening doors
Freshfields’ community impact programme focuses on access to opportunity – with an emphasis on social mobility, racial equity and access to the legal profession.
Our community impact programmes focus on providing opportunities for young people with fewer socio-economic advantages to access the legal sector and professional careers.
Our UK-based social mobility outreach programme, the Freshfields Aspiring Professionals Programme, is delivered in partnership with the Social Mobility Foundation and supports young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds around the UK.
In the US, we participate in the Legal Outreach programme for New York City students from minority, low-income and first-generation backgrounds to provide them mentoring and work experience to prepare for college admissions.
Our UK scholarship programme, the Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship Scheme, is designed to address the disproportionate under-representation in large commercial law firms and other City institutions of black men from less socially mobile backgrounds.
We also participate in the START scholarship programme and interview training with young people in our German offices; provide work shadowing through access charities in Hong Kong; mentor students at a local technical college in Singapore; and mentor young people through the charity Article 1 in France.
Colleagues are encouraged to donate to, and fundraise for, causes that are important to them through our matched giving and payroll giving schemes, and some of our offices co-ordinate fundraising efforts by choosing Charities of the Year. We devote much of our pro bono work to the communities we work in.
Last year 27% of our people volunteered for community projects
giving over 11,500 hours of time (on top of pro bono advice)
