Case Study 1

Plasseraud
Mathilde Estadieu & Cyra Nargolwalla

Our firm was approached by a large Corporate Company A in a tender process.  Company A was looking to appoint a new French local associate to assist with all their patent filings in France. Company A sent us a long questionnaire about our firm, and some of the questions were very specific in the field of Diversity and Inclusion.  As we are a French firm, we were unable to answer some of the questions regarding representation of minority groups because French law prohibits the collection of certain types of data, in particular ethnicity data.  So, at first, we were unsure as to how we could realistically continue in the tender process.  However, our firm is strongly supportive of D&I in the workplace. So we decided to continue in the tender process by explaining to Company A that we are unable to fulfil all of the D&I criteria in the questionnaire.  Then we detailed all the positive steps that we can and do take in support of D&I. The result was that Company A selected our firm as their new French local associate! 

So, please don’t be discouraged if it seems at first your firm can’t fulfil everything in the D&I space.  Every measure which you can take in this space will make a difference to your colleagues and your clients. 

Case Study 2

Plasseraud
Mathilde Estadieu & Cyra Nargolwalla

Our firm was selected to be on the panel of IP attorneys for a multinational corporate group B. This group was looking to renew its panel of IP Attorneys. In the process, all firms being considered were requested by group B to provide an EcoVadis certification, that we currently do not have. However, we decided instead to provide evidence of the actions taken by our firm in favor of D&I and other domains of Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR]. Our partner and client appreciated this effort and the in-house counsel of group B came back to us with a positive answer in that we were re-selected to be on the panel of IP attorneys!

In the meantime, our firm has formalized a CSR charter, and our CSR Commission has undertaken further actions to foster a diverse and also inclusive workplace. We are now in the process of choosing a certification to formally assess our CSR policy.

So you see how the criteria in the panel for renewal acted as an incentive to further structuring our D&I initiatives, to create an environment that values all employees’ contributions.

Case Study 3

A set of platinum spoons, a silver spoon or no spoon at all?
Anonymous

Over the years, I have frequently been “accused” of having been “born with a silver spoon in my mouth”¹, most recently perhaps because in my retirement I have a very healthy pension income, live in a multi-million pound house, have frequent expensive holidays and really enjoy life. But does that mean that I was really born with a set of platinum spoons or a silver spoon in my mouth?

I was born in the middle of World War II and for first seven years of my life I lived in a “two up – two down” semi-detached house on the edge of a village in the fensi². We had electric lights (only in the house), a tap in the kitchen and a large, very fertile garden.

My maternal grandparents slept in the larger of the two bedrooms (after all, it was their house and my family only moved in when the war broke out) and my parents, I and my elder brother (subsequently augmented by the arrival of my younger brother) slept in the other bedroom.

Cooking was over and in an open range, fired by coal. Clothes were washed in a tub with a washing dolly, the water having been heated in a copper on the range. At (human) bathtime, a zinc bath was placed in the middle of the kitchen floor and filled with hot water from the copper. We children were bathed in the zinc bath. When we had been dried, parents and grandparents washed in the zinc bath.

Going to the toilet “in” our house was an adventure for a small child – the privy³ was at the bottom of the garden! When the bucket was full, it had to be emptied into a hole dug in the garden – it was a good job that we had a large garden because, in the winter, a number of holes had to be dug before the frost set in (and freezing weather often lasted three or more months each winter).

I and my brothers were often looked after by our grandfather (who worked in a road-tarring gang that was sent all over the country for two or three weeks at a time, followed by a week or so off). My elder brother amused himself and my younger brother was a baby. Grandfather got bored with his child-sitting and decided that I should learn to play his favourite game, cribbage (colloquially called “crib”), at the age of nearly three!! By the time that I went to school (shortly before my fourth birthday), I had a mental arithmetic age of over ten. This really did teach my brain how to learn at a very early age and I have forever been grateful that my grandfather got bored child-sitting!

When I went to school (as noted above, at the tender age of nearly four years old), it took me a while to get used to a flushing toilet in the school building. Even at this age, I was expected to walk the three-quarters of a mile to school, initially just accompanied by my elder brother (three years older than me) and later also by my younger brother.

Just before my seventh birthday, we moved into a Council house just by the school, so no more “long” walks to school and no more adventures going to the outside privy!

After two years, we moved to a village in the East Midlands, into another Council house. Initially, I only had about a half mile walk to the Primary school in the next village. After I passed the eleven plus examination, I went to the Grammar school in the neighbouring town. We lived a few yards less than three miles from the Grammar school. This meant that I did not qualify for a free bus pass to school (but my friends living down the road did, walking past our house on the way to the bus stop). My parents could not afford the bus fare [on top of all the other extra expenses incurred because I was attending the Grammar school rather than the local Comprehensive school – if I had attended that school, I would have qualified for a free bus pass because that was nearly four miles from where we lived]. I therefore walked to school, until I saved up enough money to buy a bicycle – I earned money by doing a paper round (on foot) before going to school, another one late in the afternoon and then on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

I worked very hard at the Grammar school and would have gone to Cambridge University if I had managed to pass O-Level Germani⁴ – an entry requirement of Cambridge University in those days. So I went to a “red-brick”⁵ university on a full grant from the local authority (no contribution obtained or expected from my parents, but lots of work done during the vacations so that I could eat during the next term).

When I left university, I had no money - and I mean NO Money. I hitched a lift to London and stayed with an uncle. But how was I going to get a job QUICKLY? I borrowed the tube fair into London and made my way to the Patent Office, then in Southampton Buildings, and looked around for Patent Agent offices. I chose one and went in. I told the receptionist that I wanted a job as a trainee patent agent. She replied "Have you applied in writing - you have to do that or ‘they’ (meaning the senior partner or his number two) will not see you". I said that I needed a job now not next week or next month. She looked astonished!! But lady luck was watching over me - the "number two" walked passed and said "What do you want?" and I replied " A job please Sir". He replied "I don't think that we are hiring at the moment but come into my office anyway and we will have a chat". We chatted, he left (later, I found out, to see the senior partner) and came back and said "Can you start tomorrow?" I Nearly collapsed!!!!!! Me into the patent profession.

Moral:- he (or she) who asks might get; don't ask, can't get!!

So, spoon(s) or no spoon?

PS One conclusion that could be drawn from the above is that my background was one of no inherited wealth or social position but was instead characterised by an uncertain income and health outcomes which accompany manual labour, with no Welfare State safety net in my early days. But I did have the benefit of family support which arguably is priceless but shouldn’t be romanticised – after all, as a doctor that I knew used to say, in the context of rural poverty, you can’t eat the view!

1. Glossary of English colloquialisms: This is an English expression for being born into the upper classes, with privileges of wealth and status
2. Low country in the east of England
3. Lavatory
4. O-levels were the school examinations take around age 16
5. This is a term meaning (sometimes pejoratively) a university founded in the 10th/20th century, as opposed to the ancient universities which might been more prestigious.  (Though in fact several red-brick universities are nowadays prestigious in their own right, including members of the ‘Russell Group’.)