ROK’s students join Sharpe Pritchard Work Experience Programme

4 April 2022

ROK is delighted to announce that six students, all brought forward by ROK, will be participating in a work experience programme in leading law firm Sharpe Pritchard.

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The Sharpe Pritchard Work Experience Programme, which will take place from 4 to 7 April, is aimed at introducing students to major skills needed to thrive in a law career. The students will gain experience of each department’s work, work with the company's lawyers and take on mock cases to provide arguments for, as they would in their real-life legal career.

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ROK founder Denise Stephenson expressed her gratitude to Sharpe Pritchard and reflected on how their collaboration with ROK helps improve the chances of young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds to have worthwhile work experience.

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She said, “It is heart-warming to see that Sharpe Pritchard, the firm where I spent 14 years of my legal Career, nine of those as a partner of the firm, is again, for the second year, opening up its work experience programme to young people from diverse and lower income backgrounds. Working with charities such as ROK and the Sutton Trust, it is enabling young people from those demographics to have the chance to have an immersive, well thought out and considered work experience.”

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“Law is one of those areas which is still too white and middle-class, where employees are only taken from 'good schools', Russell Group universities and usually certain backgrounds. This results in group thought and culture, which hinders firms. There is no true reflection of the clients or society which is served. We hope that work experience programmes like the one run by Sharpe Pritchard will result in changing the face of law, removing ingrained inequity, discrimination and racism and moving towards a more dynamic and exciting profession.”