Following the success of last year’s event, Hanne & Co. are proud to have worked with The Challenge Network again this year and to have hosted groups of young people on the scheme at our offices. The groups came in to learn about careers in law and practice a presentation that they had been preparing for a Dragons’ Den event.
The Challenge Network is an organisation that works with diverse groups of local young people from a broad range of backgrounds and aims to build community cohesion through these young people working together over a three week project. Like us, serving the local community is at the heart of The Challenge Network’s overall agenda, which is what makes this such a fantastic partnership.
The events began with the young people hearing brief presentations from various members of the firm, including myself, on what our jobs involve and how we ended up doing them. We enjoyed sharing stories about our routes into law and advice in relation to entering the profession. Our diverse backgrounds and motivations fostered interesting conversations which intrigued our audiences and we were impressed by their enthusiasm and focussed questions. It was interesting to recount what had originally motivated us to become lawyers and how far our expectations have been met in our everyday roles today.
The groups then had the opportunity to practice their pitches for funding that they intended making to real Dragons (including Hanne & Co. partner, Lorna Cservenka) the following day. They had worked diligently beforehand to plan ideas for their campaigns, focusing upon community issues which they felt passionate about. We were impressed by the strong display of teamwork, presentation skills and thorough research. We were able to subsequently share our tips on advocacy and offer constructive feedback on the presentations given, which was well received by our visitors.
We wait to hear, with excitement, about how our visiting teams fared before the real-life Dragons – we are sure they did very well indeed. We wish our visitors the best of luck for the future and look forward to working with The Challenge Network again.
Sehaj Lamba-Trainee Solicitor
