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Focus: Diversity, Power to the pupils

"Law firms are missing a trick by focusing their diversity schemes mainly on university students rather than A-level pupils." I don't understand the whole premise of this article. Last I checked, a law degree (and thus, a university degree) was required to be a solicitor, let alone a barrister... I would not trust someone to be my lawyer without a proper law degree... And then, I don't understand why you continue keeping this old myth alive according to which students need to have lots of pro bono work and vacation scheme placements to get a job at a major law firm. This is utter nonsense, many of my colleagues did not have such things on their CV and yet here they are, working in major international law firms! This is even more true in a number of US law firms in London where the partners tend to discourage pro bono work, even though their PR brochures state otherwise. Finally, at a digital age where all kids spend hours each day on the Internet (twitter, facebook, ...) and know all about search engines, do we really need to take those kids by the hand when they already have access to all that info? Those kids have access to more information than anyone in previous generations! Are we really helping them by spoon-feeding them ? Should lawyers take the next step and go to kindergarden to tell those kids about the law too? Should airline pilots also come to school to tell kids about airline pilot jobs? Should movie directors come to school as well? And the list could go on and on.

25-Mar-2010

1:54 pm