British FTSE 350 businesses expect the law firms they instruct to have gender diverse partnerships, but have a shocking lack of women in their own senior leadership teams, new research reveals.

Nominees for the first ever UK Social Mobility Awards have been revealed to hail overwhelmingly from the legal profession. 

Large firms are misusing the apprenticeship levy to fund traditional graduate training, Law Society Council member James Kitching has said in a recent column for the Law Gazette.   

Diversity and inclusion is being talked about more than ever. For the legal profession, a commitment to ensuring candidates from all backgrounds feel welcome and supported, as well as implementing inclusive policies and outreach is paramount to its recruitment strategies, and is often splashed across law firm websites and brochures. Sometimes it might feel like this is just lip service – buzz words used for marketing purposes.

Nineteen leading law firms have signed up to ‘the social mobility pledge’, an initiative aimed at tackling the depressing lack of upward social mobility in British society.

Candidates from working class backgrounds are being locked out of the legal profession, says Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Foundation and a former cabinet minister.

Browne Jacobson LLP (alongside PwC) tops the UK’s Social Mobility Employer Index for the third time, with magic circle law firms Slaughter and May, Linklaters LLP and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP also featuring in this year’s top 10. 

Clifford Chance and Baker McKenzie are among the top law firms raising funds to support India through its covid-19 crisis.

Clifford Chance and Irwin Mitchell are the latest firms to reveal their gender and ethnicity pay gap figures, with both reporting a decreased gap compared to previous years.

Several top law firms have signed up to a London-based hybrid internship scheme that offers the chance to gain a rounded introduction to commercial property.

Recent research suggests that nearly half of the top 200 UK law firms have won business directly through social media engagement, though fewer than a quarter of these have so far integrated social media into their marketing strategies.

Browne Jacobson LLP, Linklaters LLP and Allen & Overy LLP are among 41 law firms on the 2023 Social Mobility Employer Index, with the legal profession retaining its place as the best-represented sector in the index this year. 

Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and seven other law firms have been ranked among the top 100 graduate employers, compiled by The Times.

Simmons & Simmons LLP and TLT LLP have launched joint training contracts with Barclays aimed at aspiring financial services lawyers. 

Several law firms, including Clifford Chance and Macfarlanes LLP, have launched a leadership-led, cross-firm collective developed to improve the representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups in the UK legal profession. 

Global disability network The Valuable 500 has reached its target to get 500 global businesses to add disability inclusion to their business leadership agenda, including several law firms.

US law firms Kirkland and Ellis International LLP and Paul Weiss are offering large referral bonuses of £38,000 in a bid to attract the best talent. At Kirkland & Ellis, this is double the incentive from last October.

More than 90% of UK law firms that responded to a survey by accountancy network MHA said they had made a profit since March 2020.

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