Race, Ethnicity, Religion & Belief

Race Action Plan

Our Race Action plan looks back at progress towards greater diversity and inclusion in this space and outlines our goals and practical steps to achieve them.

As part of this, we became signatories of the Rare Race Fairness Commitment. The stated aim of the Commitment is “to achieve fairness at work for people of all ethnicities - so that everyone has an equal chance to succeed”. The Commitment is based on Rare’s extensive research, analysis and experience of working to make professions, including law, more diverse. As part of a long-term plan to improve retention, progression and recruitment, it is helping us to identify future actions. This builds on our work with Rare in our Early Talent recruitment (where we use Rare’s contextual recruitment tool to allow us to understand the context of candidate’s achievements and spot exceptional talent).

RBE Network

Our RBE Network promotes DEI, with specific focus on the interests of all ethnic backgrounds and religious communities, through information sharing, awareness raising and celebrating and marking key dates, such as Black History Month, East & South East Asian Heritage Month, Diwali, Easter, Eid and Channukah. 

It provides a safe, supportive, and empowering environment in which colleagues from all backgrounds can share and discuss experiences and matters around religion and ethnicity, both in the context of the workplace and more widely. It also welcomes allies.

  
Other initiatives

• Mandatory objective on DEI for all our UK Partners
• Introduction of a Partners pledge – demonstrating their personal commitment to our aims to make our workforce more diverse and inclusive
• We support the #10,000 Black Interns Programme, which offers paid work experience to young Black people in the UK. We signed up to the programme in 2022 and hosted our first student cohort of three interns at our London office in the summer for six weeks. At the end of the 2022 internship, one of the candidates was offered a paralegal role and training contract with the Firm
• Option to add the phonetic spellings of our names to email signatures. Our names are part of our identity and for some, they can often be mispronounced. When someone gets our name wrong or assumes they can shorten or change it to make it easier for them, it can have a negative impact on how included or respected we feel. Having the phonetic spellings of our names visible seeks to help others get it right
• Reverse mentoring programme to help our Firm to foster an inclusive culture by creating opportunities for people to share different perspectives, lived experiences and knowledge.