City law firms are keen to show off their inclusivity credentials, flying the rainbow flag at annual Pride events and becoming members of Stonewall’s contentious diversity champions scheme.
But a report this week from the InterLaw Diversity Forum suggests that lingering homophobia means many gay lawyers earn less than their straight counterparts.
The report reveals a hierarchy in earnings in the profession and shows the impact of so-called intersectionality, reflecting the combined impact of racial and gender inequities.
Interestingly, Asian men were at the top of the City law firm pay league table, closely followed by white men, with black women at the bottom. The top 10 per cent of Asian men earn between £700,000 and £1 million, the top 10 per cent of white men earn between £600,000 and £700,000, while the top 10 per cent of white women earn between £200,000 and £300,000.
Earnings for the top 10 per cent of Asian women and black men are between £200,000 and £300,000. Black women earn the least, with the top 10 per cent on salaries or drawings of between £50,000 to £100,000.
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Intersectionality also emerged in relation to sexual orientation and gender. According to the figures, the top 10 per cent of homosexual men earned half that of their straight male counterparts. However, the top 10 per cent of lesbian lawyers earned between £200,000 and £300,000, compared with between £100,000 and £200,000 for straight women lawyers.
Gay men and lesbian lawyers were more likely than straight individuals to suggest that their workplace was free from bullying and unconscious bias, but less likely to suggest that their work was free from discrimination.
Lesbian lawyers provided the lowest ratings of their workplace culture and climate, and the research showed consistently negative experiences from bisexual lawyers, who reported the lowest job security and least positive responses to experiences of unconscious bias, bullying and discrimination.
Across all indicators of career success, the report found that lawyers with disabilities are consistently disadvantaged.
The Career Progression in the Legal Sector 2021 report, sponsored by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, collected data from almost 1,400 lawyers in 2018, and from more than 1,100 lawyers in 2020.
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Among the respondents, 60 per cent were women, more than 20 per cent were from an ethnic minority background, more than 20 per cent identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and 7 per cent disclosed a disability.
Daniel Winterfeldt, the founder and chairman of the forum and general counsel at Jefferies, an investment bank, tells The Times: “This report is a call for the legal sector to move away from jazz-hands diversity aimed at public perception and brand towards meaningful work that positively impacts the recruitment, retention and promotion of the best talent, including those from diverse and socially mobile backgrounds.”
Despite the levels of diversity and inclusion activity over the past decade, Winterfeldt says, the data shows that “we are still failing”. To create “cultural change”, the report recommends that firms set targets for the appointment, retention and promotion of diverse candidates and leadership training programmes to improve social mobility.
Responding to the findings, a spokeswoman for the Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, says that the organisation is “constantly striving to make sure the profession is more diverse and inclusive and to support our members”.
The Times has also seen a leaked report from the Bar Council’s race working group calling for chambers to set and publish targets for the recruitment, retention and progression of barristers from under-represented groups.
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Barbara Mills QC and Simon Regis, co-heads of the council’s race working group, which was launched last year, state that data “categorically and definitively evidences . . . that barristers from all ethnic minority backgrounds, and especially black and Asian women, face systemic obstacles to building and progressing a sustainable and rewarding career at the Bar”.
The pair say that barristers “have expressed frustration over the amount of talk about race inequality at the Bar, and the lack of action and failure to bring about change”. They call on the profession’s leadership to move from “good intentions and an ad hoc approach to more strategic, properly funded and measurable action”.
The report highlights that ethnic minority candidates are less likely to obtain pupillage than those from white backgrounds, earn less, are less likely to be appointed as Queen’s Counsel and less successful in achieving judicial appointment. It says that the Bar’s “systems and culture are based on the norms of the dominant group”, which have been “shaped and set predominantly by the mores of well-to-do white men”.
Among 23 recommendations, the report suggests the creation of means-tested scholarships and grants for students and pupils, and more explicit statements from chambers on their websites about their desire to become more diverse.
As well as targets for retention and career progression, it suggests that chambers should monitor barristers’ income by ethnicity and improve the ethnic diversity of clerks. And the report calls on the council to campaign for targets for ethnic minority barristers to be appointed to government panels, QC and the judiciary.
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Responding to the recommendations, the Bar Council’s chairman, Derek Sweeting QC, writes in the report: “We should reflect honestly on whether long-held, and perhaps defensive, assumptions about the Bar can survive the evidence and data which the report draws together.”
