DEI continues to fire up legal sector, survey reveals

_{Oh! What a lovely culture war.}

Over 6,500 respondents across UK law firms have given their responses, so far, in RollOnFriday's Best Law Firms to Work At 2026. The survey will close next week, so if you haven't already done so, rate your firm below before it's too late.

The responses so far reveal a diversity of opinions on diversity, with some believing their firms have gone too far to promote their programmes, some thinking it's just right, and some thinking there's further to go.

"I think we’re the wokest of the lot," says a senior lawyer at Clifford Chance. "Diversity and inclusion is good, but not to the extent it's forced upon us". A colleague agrees: "I'm a miserable Gammon, and the remnants of wokery still emanate."

A Brabners partner believes that the firm is "sometimes a bit too woke for my personal liking, but it means well."

Staff at Browne Jacobson are more hard-nosed: "Focus on DEI is insane. At a conference they actually said it’s their number one focus and they prioritise trans and people of colour into higher positions rather than merit and hard work," claimed one staffer.

Although another Browne Jacobson lawyer at the firm thinks its DEI initiatives were "great" as "the firm backs up the talk with multiple effective programmes which make a real difference to participants".

At Capsticks a staffer complains that there are "levels of woke that would make even Stonewall folks feel sick." While a lawyer at the firm comments: "DEI strategies are performative".

An Osborne Clarke lawyer says: "most people are lovely although wish they’d give over on the wokeness. Utterly tedious". Although another staffer at the firm espouses the virtues of DEI at OC: "They have programmes that they actively support to get more diversity into Law (apprentices, working with schools in deprived areas, mentoring promising kids from deprived back grounds)."

At Trowers & Hamlins, a staffer says: "We're all for looking out for each other but it has gone way too far, the day job comes second to endless ED&I woke nonsense."

Some staff note that their firms have cut back on diversity plans, following Trump's crackdown. A Reed Smith partner says the firm is "generally run by diktat from the US", but "at least they’ve cut the what seemed endless DEI BS so we have some peace until November 2028". A relieved senior lawyer concurs: "It went very woke but it’s calmed down a bit."

Meanwhile, a DLA Piper notes that the firm is "backing down on DEI without admitting it," but views the approach as "spinelessness in the highest degree".

"Less pushing of woke/DEI initiatives recently which is welcome," says a senior lawyer at Mills & Reeve, "I tried a few years ago to join a women's staff group but was excluded due to women-centric/gender-sceptical viewpoint (i.e. views in accordance with Supreme Court in FWS v Scottish Government)."

Plenty of people in private practice are pleased with their firms for pushing DEI programmes. An Akin Gump senior lawyer confides that the firm is "very proactive about diversity and social mobility which is encouraging", while a Baker McKenzie staffer says the firm is "collaborative and embraces diversity (in the broadest sense)".

There are similar views at Burges Salmon, where a junior lawyer says they "particularly appreciate the firm's focus on its Ethnic Diversity Action Plan at the moment - I feel very heard". While a colleague says: "I appreciate that EDI and diversity are appreciated (especially with groups like BCultured and BProud.)"

A Travers Smith senior lawyer notes that there has been a "renewed push on Diversity & Inclusion over the past year" which "has been really good to see and is in contrast to the experience of many of my peers - especially those in US firms."

On a similar note, a Goodwin Procter senior lawyer comments: "Speaking as a white middle male, the level of diversity (re: gender, in particular) is progressive and distinct from other US law firms I've worked at previously".

Some staff believe their firms could do more, however: "The lack of diversity and career opportunities as a woman mean that I will have to leave eventually," says a Debevoise & Plimpton senior lawyer.

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Comments

Obviously this article is made up and fake because I don't even know what 'woke' means and it's just something invented by right wingers to start a Culture War.

It doesn't exist!

Firms talk about DEI but what they mean is getting more posh people to the top.

Come back to us when social class is actually properly addressed by law firms.

Davos died for this shit.

"UNLEASH THE GAMMONKRIEEEEEEG!"

Definition and explanation of the etymology of 'Woke', from this larger analysis here: https://controlc.com/3ad450fb

It's somewhat dated, because it was written in the middle of the Black Lies Mob hysteria, which is thankfully in our rear-view mirror, albeit some hold-outs remain, like post-WWII Japanese soldiers refusing to accept that they've lost the war.

[tpb]Woke
\ ˈwōk \[/tpb]
[tpi]noun or adjective, often capitalized[/tpi]

• Woke, Wokeism, Identity Politics, Diversity, Equity or so-called 'Social Justice' is the contrivance, fetishisation and weaponisation of victimhood to gain status, seize resources and destroy political enemies.

• Its analyses are wrong, it is socially toxic, it is throwing the Enlightenment into reverse, it is laying down the kindling to incite a race war, and it is creating a suicidally destructive schism in English-speaking Western societies.

• Most recently it has been seen in the spectacle of students and imported thirdworlders across the UK and US celebrating Hamas einsatzgruppen (paramilitary killing squads) in the 7 October pogroms.

• Its disciples are ignorant, dishonest, or funded by hostile intelligence services such as the Chinese or ruZZians (much of the summer 2020 Black Lies Mob rioting was later found to have been incited and organised by Chinese and ruZZian-funded Twitter bot accounts).

• Left-wingers focusing increasingly on ever narrower facets of racial and sexual identity are encouraging within their own borders competing demographic blocks, each fighting for resource allocation at the expense of others. This naked tribalism - for that’s what it is - is indistinguishable from the “our turn to eat”* corruption and patronage which both characterises and bedevils Africa.

• The political fashionability of elite groups signalling their professional cultural superiority mean the political class, media, legal system etc. will tend to push in favour of entirely contrived minority rights and so-called equity, while relying on continued tolerance by the majority, all while dismissing any dissent as racist, including in diversity training/brainwashing ‘struggle sessions’, in so doing undermining societal cohesion.

Bibliography:

- *Our Turn to Eat, Michaela Wrong.
- Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, Peter Wood.
- Woke: A Guide to Social Justice, Andrew Doyle.
- The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam; The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity; and The War on the West, all by Douglas Murray.
- Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business, Pamela Newkirk.
- Woke, Inc.: A Sunday Times Business Book of the Year, Vivek Ramaswamy.
- Affirmative Action Hoax: Diversity, the Importance of Character, and Other Lies, Steven Farron.
- The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier.
- How Asia Works, Joe Studell.

Diversity / equity / affirmative action / racial preferences all come under the rubric 'woke'.

‘Woke’ is not a right-wing invention, it was originally a left-wing term which sane people then began to use to criticise the Left’s excesses. Please read this analysis in which Freddie De Boer excoriates those on the Left for their refusal to take ownership of the monster they have created:

“Please Just Tell Me What F•cking Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand: You don't get to insist that no one talks about your political project and it's weak and pathetic that you think you do. […] If you ask these people, are you part of a social revolution?, they’ll loudly tell you yes! Yes they are! They’re going to shake society at its very foundations. Well, OK then -what do I call your movement? You reject every name that organically develops! I’ll use the name you pick, but you have to actually pick one. You can’t just b*tch on Twitter every time someone tries to describe your political cohort, which again you yourself say intends to change the world. Name yourself or you will be named. […]”

- https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what

Everyone's favourite FT author, Janan Ganesh:

"Something has gone very wrong with identity politics. When a liberal says, “There is no culture war,” what I hear is: “Please let there be no culture war. Otherwise, I shall have to fall out with my friends, stand up to my children, upset my employees. Or worse, go along with them and feel a coward.” Even if it is true that 2020 will turn out to be peak woke, it is because people — writers, comedians — took a stand. A conflict was recognised, and engaged. Those who looked away at the time don’t get to turn up now and pronounce the whole thing overblown. The poet Robert Frost once defined a liberal as someone who wouldn’t take their own side in a quarrel. It is increasingly a feat to recognise the quarrel. Another liberal parry is to say that cancel culture is a distraction from the economic crisis. And perhaps it is. But then [Salman Rushdie]’s torment was a distraction in the not notably quiet year of 1989. There will always be a reason to dodge a subject. In the end, “salience” aside, what do you think about it?"

- Liberals must overcome their aversion to conflict: It sometimes takes a radical to fight a radical, Janan Ganesh, The FT, 16 August 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/8700151d-eaff-44bd-a6ec-aea1895db361

Sadly we don't have the option to simply 'sit this out' - most of us tried that, and we ended up with society going a very dark direction:

"There is a culture war going on. I don't like it. I'd rather it didn't happen. But you have to choose a side - and you have to fight and you have to win. If you don't, then either through the government or the market, the alternative vision of society will be imposed. I would love to live in a society in which we can all go away and just do our own thing. But the the experience of the last 10 years is that's not how it works. Institutions get captured. They promote an ideology, and unless you're fighting back against it, you're just going to get rolled over."

- James Forsyth, political editor, The Spectator, podcast, 12 August 2022, https://chtbl.com/track/68FDCD/audioboom.com/posts/8137204.mp3 at [16:58].

This is years old, but rebuts the idea that DEI is anything other than vile bigotry: https://controlc.com/c4fa8aba

DEI is bigotry. If you give educational or employment advantages to some people because of immutable biological characteristics, you disadvantage people who don’t possess those characteristics. This is the definition of discrimination. DEI proponents are indistinguishable from bigots throughout history who wrapped their hatred and tribalism in supposed virtue.

For a period of time from the Obama administration onwards, ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ were replacing ‘merit and equal opportunities at point of entry’. ‘Diversity/equity’ never means representation of, e.g. the working class, or conservatives, or Asians, it is a weapon used to advance carefully selected, politically-favoured ‘tribes’. There is no difference between (i) diversity; (ii) targets; (iii) quotas; (iv) affirmative action; and (v) anti-white/anti-Asian/anti-male discrimination. They are substantially identical except for the level of euphemism. Diversity should be irrelevant: all that should matter is merit.

Bluntly précised, the diversity bandwagon grifters’ schtick is simply: “We can’t impose our left-wing social engineering via objective measures of merit and competence, so we’re now deploying blackmail, quotas, and affirmative action - and creating jobs for ourselves as the moral arbiters of wrongthink”.

More recently:

Helen Andrews argued that "wokeness" and institutional dysfunction are consequences of the "Great Feminisation," where female dominance in law, academia, and media imposes feminine norms: touchy-feely, wish-washy evidence-free 'empathy' over intellect and rationality, and consensus over conflict. She explain that this was at the expense of masculine virtues such as meritocracy. She contends this shift stems from anti-discrimination laws and HR bureaucracies, which must be reformed to restore institutional efficacy: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/ (October 2025)

Jacob Savage compellingly evidenced that white male millennials in creative professions became a "lost generation," sacrificed by older white male executives to satisfy post-2014 DEI hysteria. While Boomers and Gen-Xers retained leadership, they effectively stopped hiring younger white men to meet diversity targets, creating a demographic blockade in media, Hollywood, and academia that permanently kneecapped men's careers: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/ (December 2025)