Carys Philipps-Harries is the graduate recruitment and trainee development adviser at London law firm Macfarlanes and the winner of this year’s Rising Star award at the People in Law Awards.
The graduate recruitment team at Macfarlanes look after the trainees at the firm and set-up and shape about 110 attraction events a year at university campuses, in-house and with partner organisations. These events include graduate recruitment support sessions, networking events and guest speakers from a variety of legal practices. The team also run three vacation schemes, a first-year insight scheme and three outreach programmes each year.
Diversity, equality and inclusion is, of course, an issue that many law firms are looking to confront as they try to ensure their business reflects the real world and offers ways of attracting people from all backgrounds.
“What works at one university won’t necessarily work at another,” says Carys. “We’re very conscious of the needs of students from various backgrounds and the level of support individuals need. We’re trying to take a snapshot of the real world.”
Hailing from Pembrokeshire, Carys studied business management at Birmingham University. A work experience year during her degree helped her gain an insight into what kind of career would suit her.
“I feel that a lot of people who work in graduate recruitment will say they didn’t know a lot about the industry before they started, and that was definitely the case for me. You don’t really know much about it unless you are in a sector that has a strong graduate recruitment presence or if you work in it. During my work experience year at a logistics company, I got a broad overview of all HR components. I always wanted to work in the people side of the business and this year helped me identify the areas I enjoyed the most.”
She joined Macfarlanes after meeting a London-based recruiter who immediately saw her talents and explained to her how the Macfarlanes graduate recruitment team would be a perfect fit for her. “I joined as an assistant and got promoted to adviser last year. The firm is constantly investing in its employees and ensures you are able to develop at a rate that suits you.” Carys says. “When interviewing, I knew that the graduate recruitment side would give me the bits I knew I’d enjoy from my previous experience. Macfarlanes just felt like the right place to start my graduate recruitment career.”
Thanks to the culture at the firm, she didn’t find the atmosphere daunting or overly formal. “People were lovely straight away,” she says. “It was very much a case of ‘there’s no such thing as a silly question’, and my new colleagues were welcoming and open to new ideas.”
One of these ideas was for a future trainee platform, the initiative that surely cinched the Rising Star gong for Carys. “We’re recruiting people who won’t start for another two years, which can feel like an incredibly long time. I decided to create this platform to bridge the gap from offer to joining. It’s a place where our future trainees can meet others in their cohort and get access to information that wouldn’t be available to them without being a future trainee of the firm. I worked internally with our lawtech team to build the site, and it was a new and exciting project to be involved in. The feedback so far has been great!”
Looking to the future, Carys is looking forward to working with the first Macfarlanes cohort to undergo the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination in September. “We’re currently working on the seminar programme that we will run alongside their studies” she says, adding that she and the team have more plans in the pipeline to extend mock-assessment days, improve the relevancy of support for trainees, future trainees and candidates and, thus, help improve the diversity of intakes and ensure Macfarlanes taps into the best available talent. With 66 trainees at the firm at any one time and 33 future trainees each year, Carys and the team have their work cut out.
“Winning the Rising Star award felt like an exciting way to round off what has been an unusual 18 months in the early careers space as we slowly move back to the pre-covid way of doing things and I look forward to developing further in my career and seeing what the future has in store!”
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