Increasing & Retaining Diverse Talent in the Legal Profession - What’s Holding Us Back?

Introduction

Despite longstanding legislation against racial discrimination and a plethora of initiatives adopted by the legal sector, recruitment and retention of minority ethnic lawyers is a recurrent issue.

The research continues to show that the level of attrition of predominantly black lawyers continues to be higher than that of their white counterparts, and the number of black partners across top firms only accounts for 1%. We must question why this is and move the dial forward on increasing and retaining diverse talent.

This webinar will review the statistics over the last 10 years and consider why more progress has not been made. It will also consider whether the regulators need to consider more affirmative action against firms who fail to address disparity in this area.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• Diversity statistics in the profession over the last 10 years
• Key cases/headlines citing racial discrimination in the legal profession
• An analysis of the some of the research demonstrating barriers to the profession for ethnic minorities
• Ethnicity pay gap reporting - should it become mandatory, what has the government done in this regard, what are the reasons for it
• What are firms/in-house/organisations doing to tackle the identified barriers
• Has the SQE achieved its diversity aims, has it disproportionally affected ethnic minority lawyers
• An overview of some of the issues that ethnic minority people face at work (i.e., microaggressions) and what organisations can do to tackle this
• Why training is not enough - affirmative action needed
• Diversity in recruitment - tips and benefits of a diverse workforce
• Some tips on navigating the profession

This webinar was recorded on 28th September 2023