SHOOSMITHS
LCN AWARD WINNER 2016 BEST TRAINER – NATIONAL/LARGE REGIONAL FIRM
S erial LCN Award winner Shoosmiths continues to go from strength to strength, scooping its seventh gong this year. Yet while this is fantastic news for the firm, its trainees and its clients, spare a thought for the Best in Law team looking for fresh footwear-based puns with which to celebrate the firm’s success. Best foot forward, then (groan): what is Shoosmiths doing so right? “We believe passionately in diversity,” explains graduate recruiter Samantha Hope – an unsurprising admission, given that Shoosmiths has twice been awarded the Commendation for Diversity at the LCN Awards. “We recruit both law and non-law students, as they bring different skills to the table.” In order to encourage this, interviewers have a deliberate policy of not asking specific legal questions so as not to disadvantage non-legal students. It is a simple yet highly effective way of helping to widen the intake and ensure that Shoosmiths ends up with trainees from a variety of backgrounds. In addition, every single candidate who makes it through to interview will benefit from positive strategies designed to weed out unconscious bias. Interviews at Shoosmiths are CV- blind and have been for about 14 years. “It makes me smile when I read that so and so has just switched to doing this,” says training principal Lynn Knight. “We’ve been doing it for years!” What this means in practice is that while all applications are assessed using a points system, this is used only as a filter – the results are not passed on to assessors. “No interview questions are geared towards university and schools,” Samantha explains. “Although candidates can obviously volunteer that information. It’s about building upon the social mobility and diversity already evident across the firm.” There are various different routes to a training contract at the firm: either an external application or a place on the firm’s vacation scheme can result in an invitation
2016
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Best in Law 2016
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