Our pay gap report 2024

In a year of rapid change, against a shifting global landscape, we’ve maintained a strong focus and an unwavering commitment to deliver our diversity, equity and inclusion ambitions.

Transparency has never been more important and, as in previous years, we will report more broadly than the mandatory reporting requirements by including ethnicity, disability, and social mobility as well as gender. We will continue to go beyond the mandatory reporting requirements by sharing our Partner data.

We are starting to see a greater reduction in our gender pay gap, mainly due to an increase in the percentage of women in upper and upper-middle quartiles. This shows us that more women are progressing up to, and within the higher earning roles in the firm. Similarly, it is encouraging that we are starting to see reductions in our ethnicity and disability pay gaps, acknowledging that our progress will be slower here due to the efforts we are making in our early talent recruitment programmes, and the challenges that come with diversity data sharing. We anticipate a greater difference over time.

It has a been a great year for DEI at the firm and we are proud to celebrate the progress we have made.

We recently launched our DEI strategy 2024-2028, building on the progress made to date and setting out our continued focus and commitments across the firm for the next few years.

We established an Employee Engagement team and strategy to prioritise greater employee listening and performance.

We made significant strides in gender equity and equal parenting by equalising our family leave policies, offering up to 26 weeks of paid leave for all parents – whether they are fathers, co-parents, or adopters.

This move represents a substantial increase from our previous two-week allowance for paternity and co-parent leave. By promoting shared parental responsibilities, we are starting to challenge traditional gender roles and paving the way for a more equitable society. This is still quite rare in the legal sector.

We have continued to invest in and increase the size of our dedicated DEI and Social Mobility teams providing the necessary resources and expertise to continue rolling out impactful people initiatives.

We launched our Social Mobility Incubator series – a new and innovative approach to collaboration and knowledge sharing with our clients and communities, and we were proud to be ranked joint first in the UK Social Mobility Employer Index (and our fourth year of being the UK’s number 1 law firm).

We were also proud to achieve Disability Confident Level 3 (Leader) status in recognition of the strides we have made around accessibility and disability inclusion.

We implemented a huge programme of mandatory firmwide training on conscious inclusion and anti-racism to build a baseline across the firm with over 2,500 DEI training hours completed by our people.

We have continued to offer our ground-breaking FAIRE (Fairer Access into Real Experience) work experience scheme, giving opportunities to those who would not otherwise be able to experience life in a law firm.

Our REACH mentoring programme aimed at Black aspiring lawyers trying to get into the legal sector went into its fourth year, and for the first time we collaborated with an external partner to maximise the impact and reach of the programme. The programme has had positive results with over 50% of participants offered a place on one of our recruitment schemes.

We are encouraged by the progress we have made since we first published our pay gaps in early 2018 but recognise our journey to build a diverse, equitable and inclusive firm continues, and that we must strive to ensure the progress we make is enduring.

You can read more about our diversity, equity and inclusion plans in this report.

Download 2024 report