Multicultural Network at Reed Smith

According to a report published by Business In The Community, “Only 56.3% of BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) graduates found full-time or part-time employment within a year of graduating, compared with 66% of white students”.

We have a number of programmes in place that focus on young people of these ethnicities and aim to address this imbalance.

• We are proud members of BITC’s Race for Opportunity campaign.
• We work alongside universities with high ethnic-minority representation, in particular Queen Mary University of London, with which we partner on the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre and other initiatives.
• We work closely with the BLD Foundation and their Legal Launch Pad (LLP) Programme.
• Each year, we take part in TARGETjobs Events’ City law for ethnic minorities, an event designed to give university students from ethnic-minority backgrounds a taste of life in a City law firm.
• We are proud members of NOTICED (Networking Opportunities to Integrate, Celebrate, and Educate on Diversity) an inter-firm initiative that promotes diversity and multiculturalism in the legal sector.
• We are proud to be part of the Legal Social Mobility Partnership (LSMP). LSMP is run in conjunction with the social mobility initiative PRIME.
• We work with the London School of Economics’ Widening Participation Programme.
• We are proud sponsors of the Law Society’s Black History Month.
• We work with the Black Solicitors Network.

Additionally, the Multicultural Network partnered with Networking Opportunities to Integrate, Celebrate and Educate on Diversity, the UK’s first inter-firm diversity network, to host a play at our office by the award-winning playwright, Ade Solanke.