My mother is a single parent of Nigerian and Kenyan descent, I grew up in Tottenham. There is something where parents from those backgrounds expect you to go into medicine, law, accountancy or an engineer. Every other job isn’t a job. I considered careers at an early age. I wanted to be a doctor initially […]
If I am honest it wasn’t that I put tonnes of thought into the decision to become a lawyer when I was 18. I was strong across a range of different subjects at school. I did Biology, Chemistry, History and German at A Level and could have gone in several different directions. I felt the […]
There may not have been any doctors or lawyers among the people I grew up with, but everyone I admired shared a sense of public duty and its rewards. Many first-generation Britons will share my experience of helping older family members navigate the unfamiliar systems that surround them. I may have been a quiet child, […]
I went to a state school in North London. One of the biggest challenges was getting people to accept that you had the ability to pursue goals. I watched a documentary when I was 16 called 14 days in May. It was about Edward Earl Johnson who was innocent and was on death row in […]
I am mixed race; my father is from Ghana and my mother is from the UK. I was born in the UK but grew up in Tanzania. I spent my formative years there and came to the UK aged 12 for secondary school and university, but regularly travelled to Tanzania over that period. I have […]
A criminal law firm has launched a “game-changing” stop and search app, that lets users record and store interactions with the police and automatically uploads it onto a remote server. The Legal Lifelines app lets users record footage of their interactions with police when stopped and searched at the press of a button. The videos […]
I knew I wanted to become a lawyer early on in my life – but went to study English literature as I loved it. At the time, I knew law firms recruited non-law grads and I anticipated that the transferable skills from English would feed into my legal work, which they have. I come from […]
My mother is American, my father is Kenyan and I was born in Canada. I emigrated to this country when I was eight years old. After arriving in this country we moved around and I went to a variety of different schools. I studied law at Warwick University and then completed an LLM at King’s […]
Every October, Black partners, associates, juniors and barristers are welcomed to panels, conferences and seminars to speak about their work. However, it is not good enough to do this once a year. Firms must consistently make concerted plans to improve ethnic diversity. Current data is stark both at the bottom and top – law firms have […]
Curiosity about the intricacies of being black should not be frowned upon, argues Trowers & Hamlins trainee Tara Smith.
“BAME lawyers should recognise the task at hand is not easy and understand how vital it is not to quit the profession,” says Paul Hastings’ Jennie Dorsaint.
Diversity in all contexts should be enriching. So why does the legal profession appear to still walk on eggshells? Mindsets range from those who feel diversity has been adequately addressed, to those who believe it remains an untapped opportunity. I appreciate that diversity is a layered term that means different things to different people. For […]