Community impact
Opening doors
Freshfields’ community impact programme focuses on access to opportunity – with an emphasis on social mobility, racial equality and access to the legal profession.
Our community impact programmes focus on providing opportunities for less advantaged young people to access the legal sector and professional careers.
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.
Our UK-based social mobility outreach programme, the Freshfields Aspiring Professionals Programme, is delivered in partnership with the Social Mobility Foundation and supports students in social mobility ‘cold spot’ areas.
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.
Many of our offices also have relationships with local schools, we devote much of our pro bono work to the communities we work in and we match personal donations our people make to charity. Through our payroll giving scheme we also offer our people a tax-efficient way to donate to their preferred causes.
Last year 27% of our people volunteered for community projects
giving over 11,500 hours of time (on top of pro bono advice)
