The legal scene
Looking forward It’s clear there remains a lack of diversity within the industry across the various diversity strands, including the ones mentioned above, as well as socio-economic background, religion and belief, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity and age. This is a fundamental issue that must be addressed if the profession aims to attract the best talent and offer the best services. Head to LawCareers.Net’s Diversity hub, sponsored by Gowling WLG (UK) LLP, for regular updates to keep you in the know regarding what law firms, chambers and legal education providers are doing to remove existing barriers and work towards a more diverse and inclusive profession. Changes to solicitor and barrister training Whether you aim to become a solicitor or barrister, your route to qualifying is changing. For aspiring solicitors, in September 2021 the Solicitors Qualifying Exam was introduced and will gradually replace the Legal Practice Course. Meanwhile, budding barristers can now take new, cheaper Bar courses instead of the BPTC. Discover more about the changes in the ‘Postgraduate training’, ‘Solicitors Regulation Authority’ and ‘Bar Standards Board’ chapters. Mergers In 2021, UK law firm mergers dropped to a 10-year low, with only 99 mergers completed (a 7% fall on 2020’s figure), according to a legal update from Hazlewoods. As expected, the slowdown in the number of law firm mergers was blamed on the pandemic, despite some firms experiencing their “best financial results in the last 10 years”. Some notable recent mergers include: • Clyde & Co LLP and BLM agreed to merge following votes by their partnerships. The merger has been predicted to make a global revenue of more than £700 million per year, making it the 12th largest firm in the UK. BLM will become part of Clyde & Co’s insurance practice.
demonstrate just how much more work the profession still needs to do to ensure that law firms and chambers are inclusive and accessible for disabled candidates. Sexual orientation and gender identity Just 3.5% of lawyers identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual – 2.5% identify as lesbian or gay and 1% are bisexual. This figure drops to 2.3% in firms with one partner, while at larger firms with 10 and 50+ partners, the figure is slightly higher at around 4%. Meanwhile, 2.8% of partners identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual and 8.2% said they prefer not to declare their sexual orientation. The SRA also highlighted that 1% of solicitors, reported that they had a different gender identity to the one assigned at birth – this is down from 1.9% in 2019. In firms with 50+ partners, 2.4% of lawyers have a gender identity different from their sex registered at birth. The SRA supported the InterLaw Diversity Forum in creating an LGBTQ+ Factsheet that outlines key findings from the 2021 report, including research that demonstrates the negative experiences of LGBTQ+ employees as a result of their sexual orientation; bullying and harassment towards lesbian, gay, bi, trans and non-binary people is evident. According to the SRA, “LGBTQ+ lawyers who are not ‘out’ in the workplace are more likely to leave their job and many are still not comfortable with bringing their full selves to work”. Meanwhile, while the response rate for the gender identity and sexual orientation categories in the BSB report increased from last year, the response rate for gender identity was still only 44.7% compared with 99.7% for gender. The latest report demonstrates that, excluding those who didn’t provide information, more than 11.5% of pupils, 7.3% of non-QC barristers and 5.7% of QCs identified as either a bisexual, gay man, lesbian or other (not including heterosexual).
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