Supporting Applicants

Creating Fairer Pathways into the Legal Profession

Every applicant should have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, potential, and suitability for a legal career.

However, traditional recruitment processes do not always allow every candidate to showcase their abilities equally. Neurodiverse and disabled applicants may experience barriers within applications, interviews, assessments, and recruitment processes that are unrelated to their knowledge, talent, or professional potential.

Supporting applicants is about removing these barriers.

Whether you are a family member helping someone navigate applications, a university supporting students into legal careers, or a recruiter designing an accessible hiring process, there are practical steps that can make legal recruitment more inclusive.

The aim is not to lower expectations or change the standards required for a legal career. It is to ensure candidates are assessed fairly and given the opportunity to demonstrate what they can bring to the profession.

Supporting a Student or Applicant Through Recruitment

For Families, Universities, Careers Teams, and Supporters

Many applicants benefit from having someone who can help them understand the recruitment process, recognise their strengths, prepare applications, and build confidence in advocating for their needs.

Supporters can play an important role in helping applicants:

  • Recognise the skills and strengths they have developed.
  • Understand their options around disclosure.
  • Prepare applications and interviews.
  • Identify reasonable adjustments that may help.
  • Build confidence in communicating their needs.
  • Navigate unfamiliar recruitment processes.

Support does not mean speaking on behalf of the applicant or making decisions for them. It means helping them develop the confidence and tools to advocate for themselves.

For guidance on supporting a student or applicant through legal recruitment, including applications, interviews, assessment centres, disclosure, and self-advocacy, visit:

Supporting Students Through Legal Recruitment

Creating Accessible Recruitment Processes

For Recruiters, Law Firms, and Employers

Recruiters play a vital role in ensuring talented candidates are assessed fairly.

Reasonable adjustments allow applicants to demonstrate their abilities by removing barriers that may unintentionally exist within traditional recruitment methods.

Adjustments may include:

  • Providing interview questions in advance.
  • Providing written questions alongside verbal interviews.
  • Allowing additional processing time.
  • Providing extra time in assessments.
  • Allowing access to assessment materials beforehand.
  • Offering alternatives to group assessment formats.
  • Allowing written contributions after group exercises.
  • Considering exemptions from psychometric testing where appropriate.
  • Avoiding assumptions based on eye contact, communication style, or body language.

Inclusive recruitment is not about giving candidates an advantage. It is about ensuring that recruitment measures the skills required for the role rather than a candidate’s ability to navigate unnecessary barriers.

For guidance on creating accessible recruitment processes and implementing reasonable adjustments, visit:

Reasonable Adjustments in Legal Recruitment

Building a More Inclusive Legal Profession

Creating a more accessible legal profession requires collaboration.

Applicants need opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.

Supporters need the knowledge and tools to guide students effectively.

Recruiters need practical strategies to remove barriers and recognise different forms of talent.

By working together, we can create recruitment processes that recognise potential, value different perspectives, and ensure that talented individuals are not excluded because of how they communicate, learn, process information, or experience the world.

Inclusive recruitment benefits everyone.