At Allen & Overy we recognise the importance of diversity and inclusion – it's essential to our business and enables us to continue to be a successful practice in today's competitive global market. And our approach to diversity means we recognise ways in which we all differ including age, gender, ethnicity, disability (visible and non visible) and physical appearance, as well as religion, nationality and education.

Our objective is simple: to attract and retain the most talented people, to benefit from the varied talents a diverse workforce brings, and allow our people to achieve their potential and fulfil their ambitions, within a supportive working environment.

At A&O we know that our approach to diversity and corporate responsibility will be an important consideration for individuals researching the firm or applying for open days, vacation placements or training contracts. And we already have a number of initiatives and projects underway to widen access to A&O and the legal profession, which you can read about in our Corporate Responsibility pages on our main website www.allenovery.com. These include our LGBT network, Diversity Week and Parents forum.

Here are some examples of what else we're currently doing in Graduate Recruitment with schools and universities to help achieve our aims:

• in the recruitment year 2008/2009 we will be visiting and working with 40 UK and Irish universities;
• we participate in TARGET Chances Law and Pure Potential: events which aim to encourage students from ethnic minorities and socially disadvantaged communities to apply to university and consider a career in law;
• we are a founder sponsor of the Sutton Trust Pathways to Law programme, a charity which aims to increase the educational opportunities which can lead to a career in law for young people from non-privileged backgrounds. In February 2008 we hosted a week's work experience programme for 15 Pathway students currently in Year 12; and
• as a disability inclusive employer we work with EmployAbility, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to assisting people with all disabilities into employment. EmployAbility help advertise and market our career opportunities to prospective candidates at diversity and general careers fairs at UK universities. We have also provided disability awareness training for our HR and recruitment professionals.

We know that we can do better, but here are our current statistics which we continue to monitor:

• in the recruitment year 2006/2007 we accepted applications from 274 different universities worldwide. Of these, 133 (49%) were from UK and Irish universities;
• our current trainees attended 56 different universities between them and the gender split is 59% female and 41% male;
• 24% of our current trainees are from an ethnic minority background.

Allen & Overy in London are members or sponsors of the following organisations to ensure that we are up-to-date with and support diversity and inclusion best practice: Aurora (gender), Blind in Business, Black Lawyers Directory, EmployAbility (disability), Employers' Forum on Age, Employers' Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now (gender), Stonewall (gay, lesbian and bisexual), and Working Families (flexible working and family friendly).