Justice may be blind, but the legal profession isn't, and from next year the public may get to see just what kind of people they are buying their legal services from.
The Legal Services Board (LSB), the body responsible for overseeing the regulation of lawyers in England and Wales, is mulling over plans that would require law firms and chambers to compile and publish comprehensive diversity information about their staff . This would include the 7 diversity strands – age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation and working patterns – plus social mobility.
The work is the latest in a string of initiatives aimed at changing the profile of the profession. However, the headline statistics are pretty good. Women have made huge strides over the last 40 years and it will not be long before they make up the majority of solicitors, while black and minority ethnic (BME) lawyers are over-represented in the profession in proportion to the population as a whole.
But this only tells part of the story. The LSB notes that much of the work has focused, successfully, on entry level. For example, only a quarter of law firm partners are women, and a mere 3.5 percent of partners in the biggest 150 firms are BME. "The anticipated 'trickle up' effect has not materialized," it says. There is also evidence of significant pay differentials, as well as concern that the impressive BME statistics mask significant under-representation for some groups, such as African-Caribbean men and Bangladeshi women.
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