Mayer Brown International LLP |

Mayer Brown is a global law firm with offices in 26 major cities. We’re the only integrated law firm in the world with approximately 200 lawyers in each of the world’s three largest financial centres—New York, London and Hong Kong—the backbone of the global economy.

We were also one of the first law firms to develop a truly global presence. Now we use our extensive multidisciplinary experience across countries to resolve legal disputes and provide transactional advice for our clients, with our signature strength being the financial services industry.

Our global collaboration harnesses all our firm’s legal knowledge, which means that wherever our clients are, they benefit from the collective experience of the entire firm.

Culture and Values

Our “one-firm” culture—seamless and integrated across all practices and regions—ensures that our clients receive the best of our knowledge and experience.

We encourage you to bring what makes you unique to Mayer Brown, a place that will welcome your authentic self, offer you challenging work with the guidance and support to do it well and invest in developing your talents.

We empower excellence across the board by working continuously to ensure that our environment welcomes, supports and values every individual, At Mayer Brown, you will find that welcoming, supportive culture not just in your practice area or department but through our affinity groups—32 (and counting) worldwide—comprising colleagues who share your interests and perspectives.

Our values shape our culture and are who we are as a firm.

• Contributing to our communities
• Excellence in client service
• Teamwork
• Listening to our clients and colleagues
• Valuing our people
• Delivering innovative solutions
• Promoting diversity and developing our people

Equality and Diversity

Our goal is to create and maintain a diverse, supportive and inclusive work environment where everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed and reach their full potential—regardless of race, religion, beliefs, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, age or disability.

What makes you different is what we embrace. In fact, diversity and inclusion is one of Mayer Brown’s core values—we believe creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is simply the right thing to do. It also enables us to serve our clients more effectively because teams with diverse viewpoints and perspectives produce more innovative and robust solutions.

While we designate March as Global Diversity Month each year to acknowledge and celebrate our differences, we cultivate a culture of inclusion and respect 12 months a year, not just one. And recognizing that unconscious bias exists, we conduct highly rated interactive workshops to raise awareness of this bias and promote ongoing discussion of the issue.

While we are proud of our progress, we know there is still work to do. Our women’s networks and committees lead professional development workshops for women and diverse lawyers, with a particular focus on leadership skills. We have set goals for increasing the number of women and diverse lawyers in our partnership and senior management positions. We track our progress and describe our ongoing efforts in detail in our annual diversity report.

Our mission is clear: To create and maintain a diverse, supportive and inclusive work environment in which everyone—for example, someone like you—has an equal opportunity to succeed and reach their full potential.

At Mayer Brown, we aim to cultivate a work environment in which we embrace, respect and value inclusivity and diversity. By demonstrating respect, both within and beyond our workplace, we support and celebrate our differences, while strengthening the productivity, creativity and effectiveness of our firm.
Creating and maintaining a more inclusive and diverse work environment is one of our key priorities, and this has spurred many of our Diversity & Inclusion initiatives. We drive these initiatives through our recruitment, training, mentoring, promotion, allocation of work and opportunities, expanding and developing our diversity networks and setting diversity targets.

In our London office we have four employee networks for race & ethnicity, families & wellbeing, LGBT+ and women and we have recently set up a working group to concentrate on social mobility. Our next focus will be to set up an employee network in relation to disability. Our networks regularly hold events and recent highlights include a talk and panel discussion on colour blindness vs colour braveness, a panel event on supporting trans people, a women’s health event, and a speaker discussing life with Asperger’s.

We are a sponsor of the Lord Mayors Appeal – Power of Inclusion events which focuses around social mobility and we recently hosted a panel event on Social Mobility – Culture and Belonging. To heighten awareness of unconscious bias and influence positive change, we have designed and implemented an interactive training workshop on unconscious bias.

We have launched several initiatives focused on employee mental and physical wellbeing, which is vital to create an inclusive culture. These include a global wellbeing month and a global mental health week. We have introduced a weekly Pilates class to promote healthy living and we have an on-site counsellor to support mental health. Recognising we can all help to eliminate the stigma associated with poor mental health, we have a team of mental health first aiders and we hold a range of events and seminars to promote mental health, such as an eight-week mindfulness course, suicide prevention training and talks on financial wellbeing, beating the winter blues, pushing past anxiety and on creating optimal sleep.

We work with PRIME, Myplus, Sponsors of Educational Opportunity, Aspiring Solicitors (AS) and City Solicitors Horizons to provide students from under-represented groups with training, mentoring, networking and work experience.

Recruitment Process

The recruitment process for our training contracts and vacation schemes are identical and split into 4 key stages

Online Application Form
We’ll ask you to provide some personal information, including your educational background and any relevant work experience that you have. Don’t worry if you haven’t completed any legal work experience, we’re interested in any experience where you can demonstrate transferable skills. Please make sure all information you include in your application form is accurate and thoroughly check your application for any spelling or grammatical errors.

Online Tests
Alongside your application form you’ll need to complete two online tests – a verbal reasoning test and a situational strengths test. To progress to the next stage of the application process you’ll need to meet or surpass our benchmark scores for each test.

The verbal reasoning test measures your verbal comprehension skills with five distinct modules: dexterity, comprehension, reasoning, interpretation and adaptability. Each module has 4 questions, making 20 questions in total. The situational strengths test uses a set of realistic scenario-based questions to establish how certain situations might make you feel, behave and react. Your responses will be scored in relation to traits that will help you succeed at Mayer Brown. You will have the opportunity to do practice questions for both tests before completing the real thing.

Job Simulation – Life at Mayer Brown
Should you pass the online tests you will then be invited to complete a job simulation called ‘Life at Mayer Brown’. This is a fictional case study based on what it would be like to join Mayer Brown as a trainee and do two seat rotations in two of our core practice areas. You will be faced with different types of questions, some multiple choice, some written and some video interview. This stage assesses the different competencies we look for in our trainees and vacation scheme participants and allows you to be immersed in different real life scenarios you would experience at the firm.

Assessment Day
If you are successful at the job simulation stage, you’ll then be invited to one of our assessment days. You will take part in a variety of tasks including a grammar and punctuation test, a written exercise, a fact find exercise with an associate, a group exercise and a final interview with a partner and an associate.