Page 17 - Prime - Marking Ten Years

Our Impact: Cold Spots
“We’re working to help inspire, motivate and support young people when it comes to their career options. We want to open their eyes to the possibility of working in the legal sector.”
Will Akerman, Founder and MD at MyKindaFuture
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive from both teachers and students, with many of the latter
reporting that pursuing a career in law was an option they would seriously consider following the workshops.
Building on the success of this pilot and, following a competitive tender process, in February 2020 PRIME commissioned MyKindaFuture to roll-out the programme into even more ‘cold spot’ areas. With the world rocked by COVID-19, PRIME pushed to adapt the project to virtual delivery, which had the unexpected benefit of enabling students from multiple schools to join a single session.
Nearly 30 of our member firms signed up to deliver these virtual workshops, which seek to introduce students to the prospect of a career in law and the variety of roles available to them. It has been encouraging to see PRIME’s member firms involving volunteers from across the breadth of their businesses, sharing their personal
experiences, demystifying the routes into the sector, and answering the many excellent and eager questions from the student participants. We can think of no better display of the shared dedication and willingness to collaborate by PRIME’s member firms.
Reaching students in these cold spot areas where we, as a profession, are simply not getting enough traction, is so important. Our member firms have delivered 25 workshops in the past year, reaching over 350 students. We hope that, in the fullness of time, we can return to physical workshops being hosted in law firms across the UK.
“Thank you so much for the fantastic workshop this morning. We were thrilled how engaged our Year 9s were. It gave them a real insight into the routes into law and we were so pleased at the thought and consideration they gave to the activities.”
St Alban’s Catholic High School, Ipswich
Another of PRIME’s recent areas of focus has been the expansion of our reach into the UK’s social mobility ‘cold spots’. With the dedicated assistance of our member firms and one of our
partners, Career Ready, we ran a successful pilot which reached over 150 schoolchildren aged between 13 and 15 in a selection of geographical areas where we, as a profession, are simply not getting
enough traction. During 2019, seven workshops took place in Bristol, Birmingham, Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds and Manchester.