Birkbeck Law student Wesley Manta has recently been awarded a prestigious Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship, marking the second time that a Birkbeck student has been chosen for the mentoring and scholarship programme. In this blog, Wesley discusses his journey so far on the scheme.

I was recently awarded the Freshfields’ Stephen Lawrence Scholarship, along with 13 others across the country. The scholarship seeks to address the disproportionate under-representation of black and black-mixed race men from less privileged backgrounds in large commercial law firms, and more recently in other City careers. The scholarship award is a mixture of mentoring and interning opportunities with law firms and other commercial City firms. The scholarship programme lasts for 15 months and is aimed at complementing our busy university schedules. Though we have just begun the programme, it is clear that the programme will provide a lot of value to our professional growth.

My journey started with the insight meeting. The insight meeting was an opportunity for potential candidates to understand more about the scholarship, what Freshfields were looking for in their scholars and what the scholarship programme would entail. It was a great day, with guests from Freshfields, Bank of England and AON. Though this meeting was not compulsory, it is definitely recommended, especially as we had the opportunity to speak to former and current scholars about helpful tips for the application form.

The next step of the journey was to submit a formal application. Part of the application included producing a video with the theme “My Story”. I was grateful enough to have some friends who had some video-editing skills to help with my video. Birkbeck helped fill out the application, including giving a recommendation. The support I received from Birkbeck was exemplary throughout this process.

The final stage was attending the two-day assessment centre. The assessment centre was an exhausting array of challenging exercises, created to test several aspects of the candidates. There was a theme throughout the assessment centre which really added to idea of the exercises being tasks that clients may ask us to do in a professional setting. The exercises were hard to complete but getting to meet and network with dozens of black men in the same position as I was a wonderful part of the two days.

My cohort, the 2019 scholars, have already begin meeting and learning. In our first group meeting, meetings that are scheduled to take place roughly once a month, we were treated to several lectures by senior people from Freshfields and some of their clients. We learnt the basics of maintaining a professional looking LinkedIn page, how to protect our reputation and some tips and tricks for landing a great first impression.

I am eternally grateful to Baroness Lawrence and Freshfields for providing me with this opportunity. Breaking into the commercial world is not easy, as there are so many rules and ways of working which we are never taught in university. Through this scholarship, I hope to be able to gain the practical knowledge required to succeed in the City.

Further information:

• Freshfields Law Scholarship awarded to Birkbeck undergraduate
• School of Law