‘There’s lawyers all over the world. The question isn’t whether or not Black people can be lawyers. The question is, what is it about England and Wales that means that Black lawyers don’t get the same opportunities as their white counterparts? And there’s no way to explain that other than racism.’
This comment from one City associate frankly states the issue. ‘When we talk about DEI’, they continue, ‘it’s often a very polite, corporate way of saying “Don’t be racist.”’ Law firms are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to use words like racism in their communications. But failure to acknowledge the problem makes it all the harder to resolve.
Again and again, young Black lawyers interviewed for this article expressed frustration at the way their concerns had been brushed aside or steamrolled beneath a veneer of corporate respectability.
Still, ‘The firm is getting more progressive’, in the words of a third-seat trainee at an international firm. ‘And with firms doing more, it should continue to.’ According to the lawyers interviewed, progress will require active support from senior lawyers and leadership, pressure from clients, and a consistent willingness to do the work.
‘We wanted to do something impactful’
Annette Byron, Freshfields
‘You start to feel part of a minority’
It is at the early stages of application and recruitment that the legal profession’s efforts on race have been most successful. Dedicated open days for Black lawyers make the first visit to a firm ‘more comfortable’, in one lawyer’s words, while an ever-growing web of networks within and without firms helps ensure those coming into the profession have access to advice and support.
‘I didn’t think much about DE&I at the application stage’, says one former associate at a magic circle firm, now in-house. ‘But when you start going to open days you start to feel part of a minority.’
Many commented on the disillusionment that this experience can produce. ‘I have a few friends who, when this industry didn’t seem accessible to them, their motivation just slipped away’, says Freshfields associate Blaise Nsenguwera.
Nsenguwera is also a 2018 recipient of the Stephen Lawrence Scholarship – a Freshfields initiative that was singled out by many as one of the strongest law firm efforts for Black lawyers. Launched in 2013 for first-year students at UK universities, the scheme provides a 15-month programme coordinated by Freshfields and a range of partner organisations, including the Bank of England and Goldman Sachs. ‘The scholarship offered a great way to gain some exposure to the City and to career paths that up to that point were pretty opaque’, says Freshfields associate and 2017 scholar Jamaal Jackson. ‘It was the point at which I felt the door start to open for me.’
Nsenguwera concurs: ‘That’s when everything really changed for me. It was the first time that I went to a corporate law firm, and I was surrounded by people who look like me, with similar stories and backgrounds. It gave me the belief that this space is for us.’
Freshfields real estate partner and scholarship founder Annette Byron says the motivation behind the scheme was simple: ‘We wanted to do something impactful on DE&I – something that would have a deeper approach, and something that specifically focuses on underrepresentation of the Black community.’
‘We need commitment to tackle the issue’
Blaise Nsenguwera, Freshfields
‘In two years you’re back to square one’
‘We get a lot of minority lawyers at the junior end’, says one associate. ‘The issue now is what’s happening at the middle to partnership promotion level. That’s where you get the tailoff.’ SRA data bears this out: a 2023 survey found that 2% of solicitors in firms with 50 partners or more were Black, compared to 1% of salaried or partial equity partners and 0% of full equity partners.
A former associate comments: ‘It’s quite painful. It kind of shows you your future. The attrition rate is incredible. Before I started training at my former firm, I got told that the most senior Black person, who wasn’t as experienced as you might expect, maybe two years PQE, was leaving before I joined. When you see that, for whatever reason it’s happening, you can’t really see a path for you.’
Several lawyers reported not being retained or being turned down for promotions. ‘When I didn’t get retained after training, I found it very difficult to get concrete answers as to why’, says one former lawyer who left the legal profession. ‘What I was getting back was, “You were right in the mix, you just missed out.” I later found out that while they’d said they only had two positions available, they actually offered an additional job.’
Another associate at a different firm recounts a similar experience: ‘I applied for an NQ position at the firm I trained at and didn’t get it. One thing I wasn’t aware of was that colleagues were doing things like getting taken out for coffees when I wasn’t. So maybe I wasn’t glad-handing enough or kissing enough ass. Maybe I was a bad lawyer then – but if I was a bad lawyer then, I wouldn’t be employed now, right? You never get the smoking-gun proof. But I felt it was a case of my face not quite fitting.’
The causes of this tailoff are varied and murky. For one in-house counsel, ‘One issue is certain people not being given certain types of work. The person who’s white, who’s come from Eton and Oxford, whose dad is maybe friends with a partner – they might find it easier to get a certain kind of work, whereas people without that background might struggle.’
These experiences often prove alienating and frustrating – and lead some to question firms’ claims to progress on diversity. ‘Are you really doing anyone a favour if you put them through the system to inflate your diversity numbers, and in two years they’re back to square one?’, asks one former lawyer.
Then-Allen & Overy pushed ahead in this space when it began publishing its ‘stay gap’ statistics in 2020. A&O Shearman UK diversity and inclusion head Jo Dooley explains: ‘One of the pieces of work we did showed that if you were a black lawyer at A&O you would stay with the business for around two years and five months less than your white counterparts. There was a gap for other ethnic minorities, but it was much smaller. We’re really pleased that we’ve started to close that gap.’
In its 2023 report, legacy A&O found that Black lawyers spend on average one year less at the firm than their white counterparts.
Dooley credits A&O Shearman’s achievements to a combination of formal networks and programmes on the one hand, and day-to-day work to undo systemic biases on the other. The firm deserves credit for taking the initial step to publish this information. Many lawyers interviewed argued that greater transparency around this issue is key to beginning to solve it.
‘People’s mindsets need to change’
Asha Owen-Adams, Ashurst
‘We need to stop putting the burden on all the ethnic minorities to solve the problem’
Young Black lawyers argue that the key factor that determines how well firms perform is the extent of senior support – crucially, financial support. This is all the more important when participation in mentoring and networks adds to Black lawyers’ already high workloads.
An in-house counsel explains: ‘Diversity initiatives are run by people who care – and that’s almost always Black people. So there’s more pressure on Black people to support the firm by doing more work. It’s less of an issue at firms that put real budget behind diversity initiatives. Yes, the lawyers have more work, but they’ve also got more resources to do it. It’s about having a PA who can go out and get in the right cultural food for an event, say, rather than making the lawyer do it.’
An associate concurs: ‘Lawyers, particularly young lawyers, may fall into this trap of, “I’m going to go ham on DE&I, I’m going to do all these roundtables and post on LinkedIn about it.” But honestly, firms should just hire PR professionals and pay them to do this. Don’t add to the burden for young lawyers. And meanwhile there are white lawyers who don’t have to do this and can spend their time on their careers.’
Ashurst associate Asha Owen-Adams and chair of the firm’s Black Network says: ‘We need to stop putting the burden on all the ethnic minorities to solve the problem, because, at least at this point in time, there aren’t enough of us to make the change. We really need people’s mindsets to change, because it’s hard to confront these issues if the majority of people think, “This isn’t my problem, this isn’t for me.” It’s not enough for just Black or ethnic minorities to be helping each other, because we are the minority. We need allies, advocates and sponsors.’
While ‘representation matters’, in the words of one associate, firms that don’t provide sufficient support can go from representation to tokenism. A former associate recalls: ‘Every year at the firm that I trained at there were two Black trainees in the graduate recruitment intake, and at least one of them would always be on the website. It’s a fine line – you want to attract more Black talent to apply, but you don’t want to use people as mascots.’
Too often, says one former lawyer, ‘Law firms rely on your goodwill to promote the brand as something that it isn’t.’
At worst, firms can be actively dismissive. A former lawyer recalls dealing with an HR worker at his old firm: ‘He was very combative as I shared my experience as a Black man in a firm that at the time had only five other Black men. He kept saying, “That’s not our culture, that’s not what we do.” And I said, “With all due respect, it’s my experience, and I’m trying to tell you about it.”’
More often, though, lack of interest is subtler. A third-seat trainee comments: ‘Sometimes people with traditional views aren’t as outspoken because they know they won’t be popular. But that means they go unnoticed. There are people that never attend these events, never interact with these networks. They kind of operate in the shadows, but they’re still there, and they still have influence within the firm.’
A former lawyer is more forthright: ‘All the leadership people say the right things, but it’s often just smoke and mirrors. A lot of these people believe their own bullshit.’
‘I felt the door start to open for me’
Jamaal Jackson, Freshfields
‘Are we going to go back 20 years?’
What can encourage law firms to provide support? For many, the key lies in making sure that even those that don’t care about diversity have clear reasons to move forwards on it.
Here the role of clients is crucial. ‘In-house counsel can do a lot to help’, says one associate. ‘They can go to their firms and say, “Where’s the diversity? Come on, you’re based in London – we can’t believe that Black lawyers aren’t able to do the work.” If clients put pressure on them, the firms will change.’
Owen-Adams agrees: ‘Clients increasingly ask about diversity stats. There are lot of good firms that are good in their practice areas, now you need to differentiate yourself beyond financials. It’s not enough nowadays to just earn a lot of money. There are requirements on issues like ESG and diversity. In same way clients look at their own businesses, they look at that from their lawyers as well.’
Of course, some firms still try to game the system. They use what one former lawyer refers to as ‘bait and switch visibility: they have you in the room for the meeting, but they don’t give you the work.’
However, clients are increasingly aware of such tactics. One in-house counsel recalls a situation in which her mentor included questions on diversity in a panel review for the first time: ‘The firm she’d been working with for years didn’t fill that section out, so she didn’t hire them. They were really shocked.’
The same lawyer also recounts a time that her team questioned their law firm in a more direct manner: ‘We went to our firm and met a bunch of all white male partners. My boss asked, “What’s going on here?” The relationship partner recognised that it wasn’t ideal and answered the question really well.’
This is encouraging. But interviewees stressed that progress is not automatic. There is a real risk of slipping backwards. A former lawyer comments: ‘If it’s disregarded, if it’s viewed as “not really our problem”, what happens? Are we going to go back 20 years? Because if we do we’re just going to get the same results: more racism, more Islamophobia, more homophobia.’
Another former lawyer highlights that law firms aren’t entitled to Black talent. ‘A training contract is your ticket in. But once you get that ticket and you’ve seen how things operate, you don’t need to stay. The fact that you got that training contract makes you appealing to any number of other employers. Go where the water’s warm. I’m quite happy to have taken that investment in me and walked out of the door. If that’s not a loss for the firm, that says more about them than anything else.’
‘Things have improved’, says one associate, ‘but it didn’t happen naturally. It happened because people kept pushing the needle, saying discrimination isn’t okay.’ Law firms must ensure they remain mindful of problems around race discrimination – and take active steps to address them. ‘It’s important to speed it up’, says Nsenguwera. ‘The notion of waiting ten years for people to make it to the right level of seniority is a bit problematic. People leave, people change careers. We need commitment to tackle the issue – and that has to come from the entire legal sector, not just from Black lawyers.’
Merely being seen to do the right thing is not enough. In the words of one associate: ‘It’s a question of what kind of profession we want to have. I could never respect racism. But I’d almost respect it more if firms just said, “We have a certain image, a certain kind of person we want to hire.” For those firms, the DE&I stuff is just PR. It’s window dressing.’
Still, many law firms have a genuine commitment to diversity. They encourage and promote action, run schemes and initiatives, and put their money where their mouth is. And while they disagreed on its extent, none of the lawyers interviewed for this piece denied that progress has been made.
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This article first appeared on Legal Business.