UK firms may be forced to publish diversity profiles

The UK Legal Services Board is considering a plan that would require law firms and chambers to publish information about the diversity of their staff, including age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation and working patterns. There has been considerable progress toward diversity over the past 40 years. However, while women and black and minority ethnic lawyers have greater representation at the entry level, they are underrepresented at partnership level, and there is also evidence of significant pay differentials. The proposed measures would require firms to ask all staff to complete a diversity monitoring survey and to publish the results, including the response rate, broken down by level of seniority.

UK firms may be forced to publish diversity profiles guardian.co.uk Wed, Sep 8, 2010