We work with students from primary school through to university providing access to quality educational opportunities.
Career Insight Days
We have created interactive sessions led by CMS volunteers that explore the different roles available within a legal practice. Along with developing an insight into the profession, students gain essential business skills and expand their networks by meeting with a range of professionals in the legal industry.
Experts in Schools and Legal Workshops
We bring law to life for students through the education charity Young Citizens’ Experts in Schools and Legal Workshops. Through Experts in Schools our lawyers teach students about their legal rights and responsibilities over the course of six sessions, focusing on a range of legal topics. Legal Workshop sessions bring students from our community partner schools into our offices, where our lawyers and the students take part in an interactive workshop which looks at a specific area of the law in detail. We partner with clients on both programmes and they are of real use to the students, measurably enhancing their legal knowledge and improving key employability skills.
Climate action: using the law to drive change
In 2021 CMS partnered with Young Citizens to develop a set of new resources that encourage students to think about how the law can be used to drive change when it comes to climate action.
- Teacher led classroom resource - examining the topic of the environment and climate change through a broad citizenship and legal lens.
- A legal workshop – looking at the laws surrounding the energy sector and the environment, delivered by legal professionals in the classroom.
- A ‘Legal Experts in Schools’ module - a new one-hour unit looking at the topic of the environment and climate change, delivered by legal professionals in the classroom.
These resources help to further cement CMS’s long-term commitment to education, social impact and sustainability and provide a legacy that will continue to increase understanding about the important role that law can play in climate action.
Mentoring
Working with charities including Career Ready and MCR Pathways, we provide mentoring opportunities for students across the UK. Each year CMS volunteers help students to think about careers, higher education, and apprenticeships and act as a positive role model who can help highlight the opportunities in the world of work.
Working with primary schools
- Reading: We work with charities to deliver literacy programmes with local primary schools in a number of our UK offices.
- Primary School Workshops: We have created interactive sessions led by CMS volunteers that introduce the world of work to primary school students. The sessions introduce and explore the key employability skills needed for work and the types of jobs available within a legal practice.
CMS is a founding member of PRIME, an alliance of law firms across the UK committed to improving access to the legal profession through work experience. Each year around 60 students from less privileged backgrounds spend one week of paid work experience in our UK offices through our CMS Connect programme, providing them with a meaningful insight into a top City law firm and the range of careers available. We partner with a number of our clients’ in-house legal teams on this to share skills and increase impact.
We make a career in law more accessible to aspiring lawyers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds by awarding up to ten scholarships each year, paying £2,500 towards each year of the successful applicant’s law degree, providing mentoring by a qualified lawyer and paid work experience with CMS during their first year of University.
For further details on our programmes, please take a look at our Responsible Business Highlights.
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