Changing elitism to equality

It isn’t just law firms that are committing to social mobility. The RBS in-house legal department has established principles which support its approach to applying the skills and experience of its staff for the benefit of socially disadvantaged young people, allowing staff to give something back to society and to promote social inclusion.

So, who’s benefiting?

Encouraging aspirations: First Step

As part of their diversity and inclusion commitments, RBS Legal successfully ran intensive one-week internship programmes (branded “First Step”) in both London and Edinburgh during the summer of 2013 and 2014. Each programme involved 10-20 school pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds in the respective local areas.

It has been recognised that the legal industry is often deemed elitist, so the programme is designed to give those with less opportunity and fewer contacts for work experience a real insight into working life and to help them decide whether law or a career in business is something they really wish to pursue.

The school pupils spend an activitypacked week participating in debating sessions, work shadowing, and learning about financial institutions and the career opportunities available. This enables them to experience what life is like as a young lawyer, and includes visiting the law department of a university, visiting courts and a law firm, being taught presentation skills, and attending sessions to help them build confidence and prepare for life in further education.

John Collins, director of RBS Legal and deputy group general counsel, said: “RBS Legal has for some time demonstrated its commitment to social inclusion and diversity through a variety of initiatives, including those targeted at offering unique opportunities and support to students in the communities where we operate. We are delighted to continue with this successful First Step programme and are grateful to the University of Edinburgh, our law firms and other partners for the excellent support they provide in helping deliver an experience which is enjoyed by many students and our staff.”

The University of Edinburgh are supporters of the programme, promoting the opportunity to their eligible “Pathways to the Professions” law students.

Lindsay Jack, director of the Student Experience at Edinburgh Law School, said: “Edinburgh Law School is delighted to support this excellent initiative from RBS and to be able to offer another career exploration opportunity to the pupils registered on the university’s successful “Pathways to the Professions” (Law) programme. We look forward to welcoming the students into our Old College campus for a visit during their First Step week.”

The pupils who attend have particularly appreciated the opportunity to meet and spend time with many of the RBS Legal staff. Equally, the RBS Legal team also values spending time with the pupils and supporting their future careers.

Views from 2014 and 2013 First Step pupils

• “It helped to build my presentation skills. It also helped to build my confidence, which isn’t at a very high level.”
• “It was interesting to see what inside a courtroom is like and what advocates do. All the information we got was so helpful and, even if I don’t become a criminal lawyer, I will remember this experience.”
• “Thank you so much for the past five days, time flies! Thank you for the fantastic insight and opportunity to experience life as a lawyer. This experience has helped me a lot while I decide my plan for the future. The environment and staff were amazing and couldn’t have been better.”
• “The information and tasks… really helped and made me want to do law even more.”
• “Debating was fun; I was not as confident so I learnt from others how to be more confident and prove your point.”
• “I really liked the talks from different people about their journey to their career in law. It has shown me there are many different ways to get into law.”

Changing mindsets: training contracts

The RBS Legal team also started to think about how they could offer training contracts in a way which would complement their social inclusion objectives.

What made their approach different was the recruitment process. The intention was to build a fair process which would encourage a wide diversity of talent, backgrounds and routes into law. Rather than prioritise CV achievements, the team devised a unique recruitment process which focused on the individuals themselves in real-time situations.

The exercises used during assessment days were developed from the graduate recruitment process used in other areas of the Bank and focused on behaviours, adaptability and potential.

All interviews were conducted blind, meaning that interviewers had no prior information about a candidate’s background, grades or universities attended when interviewing them.

This approach to interviewing is now starting to catch on and has begun to be adopted by some law firms.

Three RBS trainees (two in London and one in Edinburgh) have now started their training contracts, and a further three (with the same split) are starting later this year.

Collaboration

In addition to the First Step and training contract programmes, RBS Legal works closely with a number of the law firms on its panel to help supplement the social mobility programmes that they run. In the past year, more than 60 volunteers from across the UK legal teams have got involved in a number of panel firm activities, including presenting to students on life in-house at a bank, conducting mock assessment sessions and doing one-to-one mentoring. The firms and students involved have really appreciated the different dimension this has given to these programmes.

By offering these opportunities and exploring others such as how apprenticeships will be supported, RBS Legal is committing to making the future legal profession a more socially inclusive one.