The government lawyers diversity summer scheme gave more than 500 aspiring lawyers practical experience, professional contacts and a view of public service law. The blank briefcase attended by sitting on a table. It looked solemn and wondered whether years of being carried into meetings counted as legal experience.
The Government Legal Profession held the scheme online and across Bristol, Leeds, London and Manchester. Students from underrepresented backgrounds tried advocacy exercises, a mock trade negotiation and networking sessions. They also heard from senior lawyers about routes into public service law.
This was a serious effort to make a legal career visible beyond the usual corridors. It also created a crisis for the blank briefcase. It had assumed that entry to government required a polished handle, a confidential sticker and a relative who knew which door opened.
Government lawyers diversity summer scheme meets the paperwork
The programme let students shadow legal work and explore different routes into the profession. One exercise involved a fictional court case. Participants analysed evidence, built arguments and presented them under pressure.
The briefcase moved. It had spent years believing that advocacy meant being carried into a room, placed beside a senior official and opened when somebody needed a document nobody had read.
Students also heard about work involving public health, national security, infrastructure and government policy. That is a useful correction to the idea that government law is a mysterious building guarded by a Latin phrase and a receptionist asking whether your parents already know a barrister.
A scheme with a sensible brief
The government lawyers diversity summer scheme cannot remove every barrier to a legal career. It can provide experience, contacts and practical information. That can turn vague ambition into a possible next step.
It is already more helpful than telling talented people to keep knocking on a door whose entrance requirements were written in invisible ink. The blank briefcase has filed its own application. It lists advocacy under skills and networking under experience.
It lists “occasionally abandoned in a committee room overnight” under additional information. The students have found a route into public service. The briefcase has found mentoring, provided it stops mistaking a brass clasp for a professional qualification.
It now wants a pupillage, a panel appointment and a small government office where nobody can ask what it has actually done.
Source: GOV.UK.
