Wikborg Rein

Wikborg Rein's firm culture is based on utilizing our talented employees and working towards a more diverse workforce. The most important success factor in Wikborg Rein is our people where a key element of this is to promote diversity and inclusion. We have currently 25 nationalities represented in our firm. Being Norway's most international law firm, we are proud to say that we have lawyers and employees of foreign origin in our offices in Norway. This has been a conscious strategy to increase competence, diversity and exchange experiences in an international market.

Multicultural diversity is a competitive advantage for Wikborg Rein. This includes language skills, ability to connect with international clients from non-Norwegian cultures, and awareness of business cultures. It is also important for our internal work environment, where different views are very important both regarding client work and work engagement internally. Wikborg Rein does not accept discrimination in any form, whether it is based on gender, ethnicity, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation.

In order to achieve gender equality, it needs to be a pipeline from our lawyer junior level that ensures we have talents ready to advance in the career path. Our recruitment strategy focuses on bringing in young talent directly from the universities, and our trainee programs are our main channel for recruitment of associates.

With our trainee programs we aim to provide fully compensated work experience to students over five weeks, giving the students valuable insights into the business lawyer profession. We also have the opportunity to evaluate the trainees as potential future associates, and we do this through exposing the trainees to a broad variety of fields within business law. A dedicated individual sponsor ensures the trainees are able to perform in the same way as a new associate would.

We have between two and four trainees in Wikborg Rein at any given time, in addition to our International interns and Digital trainees. We aim to have gender equality in our trainee pool, and preferably a small overweight of female trainees.

53% of all employees working in Wikborg Rein today are women. Of these, 48% are lawyers, and 18 % partners. Based on our internal candidates, it is realistic to expect that we will recruit at least as many women as men as partners in the coming years. Our goal is that 50% of all partners hired in the period up to 2023 should be women. In order to achieve the goal of gender balance in future partner admissions, we have, among other things, implemented a mentoring program with tailored guidance for female senior lawyers.