Mewburn Ellis LLP

Mewburn Ellis is leading the way, embracing change and growth, doing it well and with a focus on high quality. We have applied these same principles to inclusion and diversity (I&D). We have moved into a new and exciting era. We’re committed to not only evolving our own firm but helping to transform the IP industry as a whole.

We began our journey in 2020, adding I&D to our strategic priorities and business plan. Working with I&D specialists Brook Graham we conducted a firmwide survey to help us understand the experiences, views, and ideas of our people. This was followed by a series of focus groups, which looked in more detail at key themes. From this we developed a strategic framework to help our thinking.

Our survey highlighted how challenging a topic I&D is. It means different things to different people. There were common themes, but also significant differences. Agreeing priorities was challenging as we didn’t want these to be imposed by the leadership team, but shaped by all our people.

Following this we decided to focus our energies on engagement, learning and personal development, recruitment, leadership and inclusive leadership training, and governance. We created a new board level role of Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer and established a 12 member I&D Collaboration Group (CG) drawn from all parts of the firm.

We’ve undertaken an external audit of our recruitment and have implemented the RARE contextual recruitment system. We’re also in the process of training all our leaders on I&D with over 50 going through this process. All members of our Management Board have personally signed up to the IP Inclusive Senior Leader's Pledge and we now have a detailed I&D strategy for the firm. We actively support charities in line with our I&D priorities of: listening and mental health, gender equality and social mobility and have donated over £65,000 so far to these causes.

We’re starting to achieve recognition for our work too and two attorneys have been listed in the World IP Review Diversity 2022 publication which lists the top 100 lawyers with a focus on I&D. Chosen from over 1300 nominations one is listed in the Top 25 and one in the 20 Trailblazers who have under 10 years’ experience but are already making their mark. In September 2022 we were awarded a Silver medal by EcoVadis, the sustainability ratings agency - which also assesses diversity initiatives and commitments. We are proud to say that this puts us in the top 25% of the 90,000 companies worldwide that have achieved the rating and the top 19% in the legal and accounting industry. We are the only IP firm in the UK to have achieved a Silver medal.

In a relatively short period of time, we have made great progress and are proud of this. The firm is already a better place for our people and conversations and activities are being undertaken that would never have happened before we started this journey. We have more to do, but we have the tools and appetite to build a truly inclusive culture. This is the right thing for our people and our business.