Events | June 2, 2023

Recruitment event in Stockholm for Ukrainians looking to work in the legal business

The Ukrainian Professional Support Center recently organized an event in Stockholm for law firms looking to recruit new talent. We asked Malin Leffler and Alexandra Hummel from Roschier and Anastasiia Klonova from UPSC, who attended the event, some questions. Malin is a partner at Roschier and the Chair of Beredskapslyftet, the organization behind UPSC, Alexandra is Talent acquisition lead at Roschier and Anastasiia is the Market lead at UPSC.

How would you describe UPSC?

Malin: “UPSC is a non-profit, EU-funded, initiative by Beredskapslyftet. We help companies who need talent and we help Ukrainians based in Sweden look for a job. So far, we have helped over 300 persons find a new job.”

What is today’s event about?

Anastasiia: “We were approached by a group of law firms who asked us to organize a joint recruitment event for them. From the talent side, we have both lawyers and non-lawyers here today. We started with a quick presentation and then we arranged speed-dates based on the needs of the various employers and the qualifications of the talent pool.”

What are you looking for here today?

Alexandra: “We have recruitment needs in various teams in our firm so we have signed up to meet many different candidates today, both lawyers and non-lawyers.  We are very impressed by the competence of the candidates we have met.”

What can the talent here today help the law firms with?

Anastasiia: “We have many different candidates here today, from lawyers to law students to those who have worked at a law firm with administrative work. The best thing that could happen is that we get the right people in the right place. Ukrainian refugees are taking any kind of job they can in order to support their families which often leads to them gratefully accepting jobs for which they are overqualified by far. Getting a chance to instead work in a familiar environment would stimulate and give inspiration. Another angle is that the increased cooperation between the EU and Ukraine will lead to more business transactions between the EU and Ukraine and thereby benefit for Swedish law firms in many sectors to know more about Ukrainian law and the Ukrainian society. Here we have a golden opportunity to help people get a job and the law firms to be able to gain knowledge and find talented new colleagues.”

Malin: “Yet another aspect of this is that working in a Swedish law firm can help the Ukrainian lawyers get more in-depth knowledge of EU legislation, which will be useful both for them and for Ukraine as the relationship between the EU and Ukraine becomes even tighter.”

There are many law firms here, why do you think that is?

Malin: “We all want to contribute in every way we can – from financial support to aid organizations, raising awareness and also by helping with jobs. It’s also something that our people can gather around, the internal support for this is very strong. This is good for candidates but it’s also good for us – the candidates we met today were great. I’m really happy that so many firms wanted to participate and grateful that Vinge offered to host us in their beautiful premises.”