Electric cars for trainee lawyers? Spare us the gimmicks

How times change. As someone who studied law at university, I well remember the “milk round” of interviews to gain a traineeship at a London firm.

There was the partner at Travers Smith who put his feet up on the desk and asked me if I liked his Chelsea boots. “Italian, handmade.” The clear implication was that I too could own such a pair.

There were the partners at Withers who wondered if I could tell them a joke and “make us laugh”. It turned out they were making the same request to all the men interviewees, but not the women. Already, it seemed, the all-male panel was looking for suitable “one of us” partner material.

There was the partner at Cameron Markby who invited selected women candidates to dinner with him.

Now, Stephenson Harwood is offering electric cars to newly qualified lawyers. They will be able to lease an e-vehicle under a firm scheme. We’re told that the practice, which specialises in maritime and commercial law, devised the arrangement after its chief operating office, Axel Koelsch, realised that “the key drivers for CO2 usage are buildings and transport.” As the firm works with aviation, shipping and rail clients, “to help them keep goods moving in a sustainable way that aligns with COP26 goals, [Koelsch] was looking for a way for everyone to participate.”

Come again? Presumably, Stephenson Harwood is not staffed by lawyers who revel in owning petrol-fuelled sports cars or do the boarding school run in the gas-guzzling 4×4 or think nothing of flying off to somewhere sunny for the weekend or a tropical resort as soon as the schools break up? Their country houses, too, can’t be the ones with wood-burners and pizza ovens. They’re not the folks, either, with heated swimming pools. Oh no.

Funny, because plenty of lawyers fall into this category. Apparently though, at Stephenson Harwood, they’re a breed apart. They help green-mad clients (does shipping include oil tankers, I wonder) and wish to be like them, and do their bit to save the planet, hence a Tesla for anyone who wants one.

To which there can be only one response: a large eruption of methane in the direction of Axel and co. Despite their insistence – and I’ve studied their quote every which way and I still can’t make sense of it – what I suspect this is really about is a marketing ploy, dreaming up a new, eye-catching carrot to be dangled along with other inducements in what is a fiercely competitive employment market.

We’ve already seen the London office of US law firm, Cooley, providing £45,000 for fertility treatment as part of a “family-forming” initiative. Cooley is also paying for adoption costs. Other City law are stumping up for menopause treatments.

Meanwhile, a US firm is paying newly qualified lawyers in its London office £153,000 a year, far more than pay levels for graduates at the major investment banks. Other firms either can’t afford to hand out salaries like that or they don’t want to be seen to be so crudely money minded, so they conjure up something publicity-grabbing and touchy-feely and right on, showing they’re lawyers with consciences, that they care.

You see, I don’t believe City lawyers and their ilk have altered that much. They love their luxuries. The FT has a supplement devoted to the cause, How To Spend It. At one firm, partners keep different designer watches in their top drawer and which they choose depends on the client and what they think impresses them.

They may not stick their hand-made Italian boots on a table, but they continue to wear them and flaunt them, and yes, seek admiring glances.

They may not demand that male recruits tell jokes but ask women how hard it is to reach the top. It may not be a laugh at the interview that seals a partnership but it’s still the wisecrack in the heavily male preserve of the box at Lord’s or golf club bar.

As for the sexual predator, again, they may not be so explicit – #MeToo has seen to that – but let’s not pretend such behaviour no longer exists.

The challenge for the City, for the Stephenson Harwoods, if they wish to be regarded as genuinely ecologically responsible, is to take measures that are deep and meaningful – to insist that clients have a solid green agenda, to offer electric cars to all employees (why should they be made available to the newly-qualified solicitors, are the rest not deemed good enough?), to not take flights back and forth, to give generously (and I mean generously, not token amounts) to environmental endeavours. While they’re at it, too, they can base their hiring process on greater diversity, and recruit and promote according to ability, not whether someone is a “good bloke”.

In the meantime, spare us the gimmicky gestures. No one is convinced.