Gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting
We are required to report our gender pay gap in the UK, which helps us to better understand where we need to make further improvements and address imbalances. We voluntarily include our partner population in this report, and as signatories of the Business In The Community Race at Work Charter, we are advocates for ethnicity pay gap reporting and have voluntarily reported since 2019. Our report is publicly available on our website.
Building an inclusive culture
We are proud of our people networks – active groups of colleagues who are passionate about making a positive impact in our business and beyond. Our networks are open to all our employees and partners, and they serve to:
– help build a sense of community through peer support and a social network across geographical boundaries
– raise awareness and understanding of D&I
– provide insight and help highlight barriers to inclusion
– provide a collective voice for minority groups and act as a sounding board
– support our engagement with clients and external bodies
Our work is supported by a number of key programmes and initiatives, which we continuously keep under review.
These include:
10,000 Black Interns
We have partnered with the 10,000 Black Interns Foundation, a registered charity seeking to transform the horizons and prospects of young black people in the UK. Our commitment is to host six students each year over a five-year period. Our first cohort resulted in an offer of two training contracts that will commence in 2024.
Career Sponsorship
We actively support the progression of under-represented talent at all career stages within our firm. This is a targeted intervention designed to support a reduction in the pay gap and to increase diverse representation at senior levels, aligned to our broader D&I targets. During the first year, we have formally supported 85 individuals from under-represented groups whereby access to clients, networks and opportunities are facilitated by a senior leader in the firm.
European Female Leadership Community
Established in May 2022, as an initiative of European Managing Partner Helen Thomas, the Community brings together senior female colleagues across our European offices to network, share ideas and opportunities, and build their personal brand. The first in-person meeting took place in Paris last year, followed by another face-to-face meeting in Amsterdam earlier this year. The meetings brought together over 40 colleagues from our offices in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg for sessions including leadership, business development and role model speaker sessions. The next event will take place in early 2024 in Dusseldorf.
Family and Career Leave Programme
We offer a programme for colleagues who will be taking more than three months out of the business for family or career reasons to support these critical transitions out and back into the business, maintaining both client service excellence and individual success in role, including periods of family leave, sabbaticals, client secondments and career breaks.
Hong Kong Student Award
Each year we support talented law students from lower socio-economic backgrounds by providing financial support and work experience in their first year of legal studies. Since the programme launched in 2022, we have supported five students with a financial award and a paid two-week internship with the firm. Through this initiative, we aim to help students unlock their potential and gain important insights into the legal industry.
Inclusive Leadership, Teams and Behaviours
We provide specific training on inclusive behaviours for our senior leadership, and operate a framework for facilitating regular, open and effective conversations about D&I at a team level across our business.
Our Blended Working approach also aims to ensure that we continue to provide colleagues with flexibility and support in order to maintain an effective balance between office and home based working.
Say Gap
As a global law firm advising many of the biggest client names on their complex legal challenges, our media spokespeople have a key role in commenting on the topical commercial and legal issues of the day.
Established two years ago by our public relations team, the Say Gap initiative was designed to track and monitor our media relations coverage to ensure greater gender and ethnic representation from our spokespeople quoted in the media, whilst also continuing to work with all of our expert media contributors from across the business. Defined as an absence of women’s and ethnic minority ideas and voices in society, and similar to the measurement in the UK of the gender pay gap, the firm’s Say Gap initiative introduced measures to ensure the firm uses a wider cross-section of expert spokespeople which better reflects the make-up of the firm and the communities it operates in.
Since its launch in 2021, we have increased the representation of female spokespeople from 30% to 45%, and therefore have increased our target to 50% by 2024. We have achieved our first-year target for our diverse ethnic spokespeople of 5%, and we will continue to challenge ourselves to do more including increasing the target to 10% by 2024 and widening the pool of colleagues from this cohort.
Our Say Gap initiative was recently recognised at Law.com’s Legal Innovation Awards 2023 as winner of the Leading PR & Communications Innovation Award.
SQE Academy
In 2022 we launched our Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) Academy with the aim of broadening access to the legal profession and helping to create a more diverse solicitor workforce. Through this programme we enrol a number of paralegal candidates each year to undertake the required training, courses, and supervision to become newly qualified lawyers over a two-year period. The candidates on our SQE Academy are in addition to our existing cohorts of trainees and apprentices, and so creates three possible routes for our future talent to achieve legal qualification.
Unlocked
We work with the Sutton Trust through their Pathways to Law programme to offer sixth form students from less advantaged backgrounds a period of work experience within the UK firm. The programme, which began in 2008, provides an in-depth insight and practical experience of working for an international law firm. To date we have supported 1,200+ students access work experience, skills and mentoring.
Our recognition and pledges
Gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting
We are required to report our gender pay gap in the UK, which helps us to better understand where we need to make further improvements and address imbalances. We voluntarily include our partner population in this report, and as signatories of the Business In The Community Race at Work Charter, we are advocates for ethnicity pay gap reporting and have voluntarily reported since 2019. Our report is publicly available on our website.
Building an inclusive culture
We are proud of our people networks – active groups of colleagues who are passionate about making a positive impact in our business and beyond. Our networks are open to all our employees and partners, and they serve to:
– help build a sense of community through peer support and a social network across geographical boundaries
– raise awareness and understanding of D&I
– provide insight and help highlight barriers to inclusion
– provide a collective voice for minority groups and act as a sounding board
– support our engagement with clients and external bodies
Our work is supported by a number of key programmes and initiatives, which we continuously keep under review.
These include:
10,000 Black Interns
We have partnered with the 10,000 Black Interns Foundation, a registered charity seeking to transform the horizons and prospects of young black people in the UK. Our commitment is to host six students each year over a five-year period. Our first cohort resulted in an offer of two training contracts that will commence in 2024.
Career Sponsorship
We actively support the progression of under-represented talent at all career stages within our firm. This is a targeted intervention designed to support a reduction in the pay gap and to increase diverse representation at senior levels, aligned to our broader D&I targets. During the first year, we have formally supported 85 individuals from under-represented groups whereby access to clients, networks and opportunities are facilitated by a senior leader in the firm.
European Female Leadership Community
Established in May 2022, as an initiative of European Managing Partner Helen Thomas, the Community brings together senior female colleagues across our European offices to network, share ideas and opportunities, and build their personal brand. The first in-person meeting took place in Paris last year, followed by another face-to-face meeting in Amsterdam earlier this year. The meetings brought together over 40 colleagues from our offices in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg for sessions including leadership, business development and role model speaker sessions. The next event will take place in early 2024 in Dusseldorf.
Family and Career Leave Programme
We offer a programme for colleagues who will be taking more than three months out of the business for family or career reasons to support these critical transitions out and back into the business, maintaining both client service excellence and individual success in role, including periods of family leave, sabbaticals, client secondments and career breaks.
Hong Kong Student Award
Each year we support talented law students from lower socio-economic backgrounds by providing financial support and work experience in their first year of legal studies. Since the programme launched in 2022, we have supported five students with a financial award and a paid two-week internship with the firm. Through this initiative, we aim to help students unlock their potential and gain important insights into the legal industry.
Inclusive Leadership, Teams and Behaviours
We provide specific training on inclusive behaviours for our senior leadership, and operate a framework for facilitating regular, open and effective conversations about D&I at a team level across our business.
Our Blended Working approach also aims to ensure that we continue to provide colleagues with flexibility and support in order to maintain an effective balance between office and home based working.
Say Gap
As a global law firm advising many of the biggest client names on their complex legal challenges, our media spokespeople have a key role in commenting on the topical commercial and legal issues of the day.
Established two years ago by our public relations team, the Say Gap initiative was designed to track and monitor our media relations coverage to ensure greater gender and ethnic representation from our spokespeople quoted in the media, whilst also continuing to work with all of our expert media contributors from across the business. Defined as an absence of women’s and ethnic minority ideas and voices in society, and similar to the measurement in the UK of the gender pay gap, the firm’s Say Gap initiative introduced measures to ensure the firm uses a wider cross-section of expert spokespeople which better reflects the make-up of the firm and the communities it operates in.
Since its launch in 2021, we have increased the representation of female spokespeople from 30% to 45%, and therefore have increased our target to 50% by 2024. We have achieved our first-year target for our diverse ethnic spokespeople of 5%, and we will continue to challenge ourselves to do more including increasing the target to 10% by 2024 and widening the pool of colleagues from this cohort.
Our Say Gap initiative was recently recognised at Law.com’s Legal Innovation Awards 2023 as winner of the Leading PR & Communications Innovation Award.
SQE Academy
In 2022 we launched our Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) Academy with the aim of broadening access to the legal profession and helping to create a more diverse solicitor workforce. Through this programme we enrol a number of paralegal candidates each year to undertake the required training, courses, and supervision to become newly qualified lawyers over a two-year period. The candidates on our SQE Academy are in addition to our existing cohorts of trainees and apprentices, and so creates three possible routes for our future talent to achieve legal qualification.
Unlocked
We work with the Sutton Trust through their Pathways to Law programme to offer sixth form students from less advantaged backgrounds a period of work experience within the UK firm. The programme, which began in 2008, provides an in-depth insight and practical experience of working for an international law firm. To date we have supported 1,200+ students access work experience, skills and mentoring.
Our recognition and pledges
