2025 Impact Report
People
Purposeful careers.
We know we do our best work when we can be ourselves. Our values to care, enjoy, imagine and achieve are the essence of who we are, and what it means to make a difference at Cripps.
What we've achieved in 2025:
Last year, we shared the following impact goals to:
- Join the Social Mobility Employer Index in 2025 and achieve a ranking among the top 75 by 2027.
- Achieve accreditation as a ‘Disability Confident’ employer in 2026.
- Deliver a report on CareerDeveloper by 2027 to demonstrate its impact, and areas for improvement.
- Continue to support greater inclusion of under-represented groups through training, awareness and working with partnership organisations.
Our progress on these goals:
- Submitted an assessment to the Social Mobility Foundation and received a report to guide our new social mobility strategy.
- Registered as Disability Confident Level 1, committing to key requirements and improvements for a more inclusive workplace.
- Partnered with All About Law to support aspiring lawyers with opportunities and career confidence.
- Onboarded Shortlister to enhance graduate and apprenticeship hiring, using AI and behavioural science to identify top talent.
- Welcomed 12 graduates on work placements and offered 3 training contracts; 80% of trainees chose to stay with the firm.
- Ensured 100% of our people receive the Real Living Wage.
- 35 managers completed the management essentials programme, with two further cohorts planned for 2026.
- Introduced a learning pathway for each career level to guide development options and accelerate on-the-job learning.
- Delivered 696 training events for staff and partners; colleagues also accessed 1,583 documents, reading materials, podcasts and eLearning sessions.
From early career to future impact:
Access to the legal profession
The legal sector is not representative of the UK’s diverse communities. We care about creating pathways into law for people who may not otherwise have seen it as an option.
In 2025, we:
- Saw our first solicitor apprentices (from 2018) achieve their law degrees. Four more apprentices joined.
- Accommodated a 275% surge in attendance of our online apprenticeship session mirroring a wider shift across the UK of young people seeking more accessible and financially realistic routes into skilled professions.
- Widened apprentice placements to include business support services to give aspiring professionals a foundational knowledge of business management.
- Partnered with Wrotham School, Beacon Academy, Skinners’ Kent Academy and Collyers College to offer opportunities for students wanting to experience what a career in law might look like.
- Welcomed six students for our first structured work experience programme.
Investing in confident, future lawyers
Our Future Lawyers programme, designed by our own experienced lawyers and business services experts, helps us support the long term performance and retention of our early career lawyers. This blended learning initiative is strategically timed to run alongside the training contract or solicitor apprenticeship and extends into the initial year of qualification, setting a strong foundation for a successful career at Cripps.
The programme aligns with the four core behaviours in our CareerDeveloper framework to ensure our future lawyers build not only technical excellence, but the confidence, judgement and commercial awareness needed to deliver exceptional client service. Early feedback shows the programme is meeting learners where they are, with 83% of participants confirming the content is well aligned to their stage of career.
Our ambitions for 2026:
- Develop our accessibility sub-group work towards Disability Confident Level 2. Report on progress in the 2026 impact report.
- Around a third of our people are choosing to not disclose diversity data. We want to create the conditions where all our people feel able to share data, by showing how their participation helps us evidence that we have an inclusive workplace.
- Continue assessing outcomes of CareerDeveloper framework to report in 2027.
- Launch financial well-being support to enable people at all life stages to easily manage their financial planning.
- Relaunch employee engagement survey in 2026 to continue capturing and acting on the voice of our people.