The Legal Services Board has approved plans which will lead to all firms and chambers having to post their diversity and social mobility statistics online.
The move, mooted last year and now coming to fruition, will see every law firm required to give a precise breakdown of the diversity of their workforce (even though many already volunteer the info). You can read the LSB's guidance, but in short it seems that firms will have to survey staff on stuff like age, gender, disability, ethnic group and socio-economic background and then publish their anonymised findings for the world to see.
The LSB has given its backing to the initiative - along with handfuls of charities - to help "widen the pool of talented lawyers" and to highlight the "moral case for increasing diversity". As the LSB notes, only 25% of law firm partners are female and only 3.5% black or minority ethnic. Although whether firms publicly acknowledging that fact will encourage more applicants from BME backgrounds is to be seen. And seriously, do clients actually care?
Firms have until December 2012 to come up with the numbers but Linklaters has got the ball rolling, proudly revealing yesterday that a massive 22% of its UK partnership (and only 16% of its global partnership) is female, 89% is white and 0% is Muslim. Physician, heal thyself.
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The move, mooted last year and now coming to fruition, will see every law firm required to give a precise breakdown of the diversity of their workforce (even though many already volunteer the info). You can read the LSB's guidance, but in short it seems that firms will have to survey staff on stuff like age, gender, disability, ethnic group and socio-economic background and then publish their anonymised findings for the world to see.
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Law firms: proud of diversity since 1853 |
The LSB has given its backing to the initiative - along with handfuls of charities - to help "widen the pool of talented lawyers" and to highlight the "moral case for increasing diversity". As the LSB notes, only 25% of law firm partners are female and only 3.5% black or minority ethnic. Although whether firms publicly acknowledging that fact will encourage more applicants from BME backgrounds is to be seen. And seriously, do clients actually care?
Firms have until December 2012 to come up with the numbers but Linklaters has got the ball rolling, proudly revealing yesterday that a massive 22% of its UK partnership (and only 16% of its global partnership) is female, 89% is white and 0% is Muslim. Physician, heal thyself.