Law firms may be forced to come clean on diversity figures
10 September 2010
The Legal Services Board (LSB) is considering compelling law firms and chambers to compile and publish diversity statistics about their staff.

This is the latest in a series of initiatives to encourage a more diverse profession and increase access to candidates from all backgrounds. If it goes ahead, firms will have to provide information on social mobility plus seven diversity characteristics: age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation and working patterns, according to a report in the Guardian.

However City firms have been disclosing diversity information for a while now in pitch documents, when dealing with local authority clients or US investment banks. Or, for those that have signed up, as part of the Law Society's Diversity and Inclusion Charter. So will these proposals achieve anything new?

A law firm starts to gather diversity statistics yesterday

Ruth Grant, Co-Chair of the Hogan Lovells Diversity Committee, told RollOnFriday that whilst such openness is to be encouraged, making it compulsory can be sticky. Whilst she was "very much in favour" of firms being encouraged to disclose diversity data, she said that if firms are forced to collect data, that may "cause serious issues for them if not dealt with extremely sensitively - and may undermine rather than encourage diversity initiatives".

In any event, firms outside major cities, for example, may find their statistics skewed by having a less diverse pool of applicants on which to draw in the first place. And lawyers may be reluctant to provide such personal information. So two rather than three cheers really.