Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity & Inclusion

We believe in equality and diversity for everyone – employees, clients and the firm. As part of our overall commitment to equality of opportunity, we are fully dedicated to promoting a good harmonious working environment where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.

Our Equality and Diversity Committee is chaired by the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (COLP) and consists of a group of Partners and Associates, together with the Head of Human Resources. The Committee meets regularly to consider equality and diversity issues throughout the firm, monitoring and reporting of diversity data, policy reviews and compliance with relevant legislation as well as identifying areas for improvement and auctioning the same.

The Committee reports regularly to the Managing Partner and the Group Leaders.

Diversity Policy

We are committed to making our diversity policy effective and will take all appropriate steps to ensure everyone is treated fairly.

The Law Society Diversity and Inclusion Charter

In 2010, we became a signatory of The Law Society Diversity and Inclusion Charter. Like The Law Society, we believe this commitment to diversity and inclusion is essential to reflect the society we serve today. It makes business sense because it helps us to attract and retain the best talent, it enables us to understand and meet clients’ needs more effectively and so provide a better quality service.

Accordingly, we will:

• Strive to achieve best practice in our recruitment, retention and career progression practices as employers.
• Support the development of good diversity practice by collecting and sharing examples of practical activities that contribute to progress with other signatories.
• Assign responsibility for meeting our Charter commitments to a named, senior level individual.
• Work together to develop and adopt future protocols that support the practical implementation of the aims of this Charter.
• Annually publish the diversity profile of our UK employees and details of our work on equality, diversity and inclusion.
• Publish a joint annual report on the basis of a monitoring exercise to measure the impact of this Diversity and Inclusion Charter and its protocols. These reports will form the basis of regular dialogue with stakeholders, employees and clients.

Diversity statistics

We encourage all staff to complete an optional annual diversity questionnaire. Please note, just over 50% of employees have completed the questionnaire and therefore some of the figures shown are an under-representation of our diversity. View the Lester Aldridge Diversity Statistics 2019 and our Gender Pay Gap Statement 2019.