News - News - Launch of the First Diversity League Table

The UK's first Diversity League Table of the top 100 law firms was launched today by the Black Solicitors Network (BSN). Only sixty of the top 100 law firms responded and seven of the remaining sixty failed to provide complete information or the information provided were in incorrect format. The League Table, which contains some very sobering statistics, provides a demographic table of ethnicity and gender of the final fifty three participating firms.

Speaking at the launch the deputy President of the Law Society, Andrew Holroyd, welcomed the report and said that the Law Society is ready to help firms with their diversity monitoring. Michael Webster, one of the BSN directors, noted that clients are beginning to request evidence of ethnic minority employees and asked the top 100 firms to target ethnic minority press in their recruitment.

Shoosmiths were first in the League Table, Fladgate Fielder and Freeth Cartwright were in second and third positions respectively. For the number of ethnic minority partners, Fladgate Fielder were first with 7.69% (3 out of 39) of their partners being ethnic minorities.

Only eight of the top ten City firms were ranked: Clifford Chance (9th), Norton Rose (10th), Allen & Overy (21st), Lovells (30th), Herbert Smith (31st), DLA Piper (39th), Freshfields (41st) and Slaughter & May (44th).