Linklaters plans to go green by ditching printed recruitment material
Linklaters is planning to scrap its graduate recruitment brochures in a bid to become more environmentally friendly.
Matthew Keats
The magic circle firm said it hopes to put a stop to printing the usual 7,500 hard copies of its graduate recruitment brochure next year, but only if students are keen on the idea.
Graduate recruitment partner Matthew Keats said: “We know that people use our website regularly and many now prefer to look at things online where content and information about the firm is updated continually. Therefore, it seems counterintuitive to produce large numbers of hard copy brochures which are out of date almost as soon as they go to print.
“I think we have to move away from students going to law fairs and coming out laden down with bags upon bags of freebies and brochures,” added Keats.
Linklaters will make a final decision on whether to ditch hard copy brochures over the next six to eight months after speaking with students to gauge their reaction.
The news comes weeks after the firm announced that it had turned its back on the usual law fair giveaway hysteria this year by doing away with freebies in favour of donating money to charity.Rather than hand out the usual items such as stationery and umbrellas, the firm has pledged £18,000 for a literacy festival for five to 15-year-olds in Hackney, East London (12 October 2009).
The firm helped fund the week-long StarLit Festival, which gave more than 3,000 children the opportunity to read new books and meet authors. The cash also meant every child at the festival could take a book home.
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Readers' comments (14)
Anonymous | 3-Nov-2009 11:13 am
K&L Gates did this last year - they used the money saved to launch a student competition where the winner had money donated to a charity of their choosing (from a set list)
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pdf lover | 3-Nov-2009 11:19 am
I won't come through with the cynical and predictable response that this is aimed at reprographics cost savings - rather than benevolence. But what i will say is that this makes sense - PDFs are infinitely more useful. You can send them around to others, store & view them on mobile devices when attending recruitment evenings etc. And they're cheap as chips.
I personally don't know why law firms bother with paper for recruitment these days and I find it surprising that Shoosmiths are still using parchment.
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Anonymous | 3-Nov-2009 11:28 am
Makes sense, although I would imagine most people will just print out their own copies of the online material.
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LawyerNot2B | 3-Nov-2009 11:37 am
Although this sounds like a blatant PR stunt I'm all in favour of getting rid of brochures - they are a complete waste of paper - I picked up loads of brochures at a law fair recently and chucked them all in the recycling bin the very next morning.
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Anonymous | 3-Nov-2009 12:19 pm
Easier for big brands do away with printed copies, less so for those firms fighting for good recruits. They need all the help they can get. If this is a trend, differentiation will primarily rely on quality of websites but most sites will begin to be tad sameness - blogs, video clips, twitter etc From a firm's marketing perspective, least print gives additional scope to be creative and if designed well won't easily be consigned to the bin!
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Anonymous | 3-Nov-2009 12:51 pm
Why graduate recruitment?
The teeming hordes of idle PQ2+s are much more likely to get the change right on my coffee order.
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Anonymous | 3-Nov-2009 12:52 pm
Well done, Linklaters. A genuine, measurable green initiative. So much better than those waffly commitments from lesser firms that have been mentioned recently.
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Tom W | 3-Nov-2009 1:06 pm
Why not offer an interactive brochure that can be downloaded by bluetooth at law fair stalls. Students can connect to the law firms bluetooth and download the interactive brochure. Fairly novel, fairly cheap, saves on brochures but still allows students to take something away with them (rather than hope that they remember to download it later when there's a good chance they'll forget...)
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City Gent | 3-Nov-2009 1:36 pm
This sort of hypocritical greenwashing makes me puke.
I'll start believing they give a stuff about the environment when the partners trade in their BMW's, Porsches and Mercs for VW Polo's and turn off the air-con in their offices!
The phrase "rearranging the deckhairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.
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Postman Pat's Black & White Cat | 3-Nov-2009 4:07 pm
In response to those of you whose default setting is cynicism, it seems that you would prefer law firms to continue to use up the world's resources printing brochures which clearly get thrown in the bin rather than take some corporate social responsibility.
They are damned if they do, damned if they don't, it seems.
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