Linklaters is a leading global law firm, with 31 offices in 21 countries. DE&I is the pulse of the firm, running through its global business strategy and firmly embedded in its culture and values. It is committed to using its position as a global business to create fairer systems and a more inclusive culture within the firm and beyond.

In 2020, Linklaters publicly declared its commitment to becoming an anti-racist firm and pledged to improve the representation of Black and under-represented minority ethnic professionals at all levels. Its Race Action Plan encapsulates the concrete actions, backed by targets, that it is taking to achieve this goal.

Introduction and Background

Linklaters LLP is a leading global law firm, advising the world’s leading companies, financial institutions and governments on their most important and challenging transactions and assignments. We combine legal expertise with a collaborative and commercial approach to help clients navigate constantly evolving markets and regulatory environments, pursuing opportunities and managing risk worldwide.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is the pulse of our firm, running through our global business strategy and firmly embedded in our culture and values. As a people business, we know we need the best diverse talent to deliver the most innovative solutions to our clients around the world. We are also committed to using our position as a global business to create fairer systems and a more inclusive culture within our firm and beyond.

We take a global approach to delivering meaningful progress across our six priority focus areas (gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQIA+, age and life stage, social mobility and disability), empowering our local teams to drive actions that make sense in a local context. That way, change is meaningful, sustainable and has impact.

Challenges and Strategies

In the early years of our DEI evolution – we are now almost 15 years in – it was important to show that DEI was fundamentally about business and driving better business outcomes. We had to overcome the perception that DEI was an outsourced function or a separate role to be completed on top of the day job, and show that it was part of our culture and the way we do business.

To achieve this, we worked hard to engage leaders to amplify our voice and mission. Having DEI Champions at the leadership level was crucial to moving DEI out of HR and into the boardroom. In those nascent stages, we gained momentum by ‘working with the willing’ – those leaders who intuitively understood the purpose of DEI (usually through personal experience) and were able to use their influence. We started with 2 global DEI Partners and eventually grew this network to approximately 30 DEI Partners around the world, along with Executive Champions aligned to each of our priority strands.

Key Initiatives and Outcomes

We established a global policy for Billable Credit for DEI contributions – this has resulted in more than 30,000 hours of active DEI billable time contributed by our people since the policy’s launch in November 2022. We also have a long-running global reverse mentoring programme, with 176 pairs taking part in total and 100% of participants endorsing the programme as a way to create a more inclusive culture in the firm.

We have also met and exceeded our target of 40% women in global new partner elections for the last four years, and continue to exceed our target of 30% women in leadership and management positions. We reached our race and ethnicity target early for at least 15% of US and UK partnership to identify as minority ethnic by 2025, and we were recently ranked 4th out of law firms with the most ethnically diverse partnerships by Law.com in August 2024.

Organisational Growth and Learning

Over the last 15 years, our DEI strategy has evolved from a few gender initiatives driven by the HR function in our UK headquarters, to a fully embedded firmwide strategic priority, spanning six strands across the globe, driven at the board level. Our DEI evolution has reinforced the importance of active and committed leadership in setting the tone and keeping it on the board’s agenda.

We have also leveraged our DEI experience and resources to collaborate with our clients to drive greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal profession, and to make a positive social impact in the wider communities in which we operate.

Future Plans and Goals

We will focus on consistently embedding initiatives and expanding them globally, taking into account regional nuances (for example our new neurodivergence training). We will work with our active network of DEI Champions to embed an inclusive culture in their teams’ daily experiences. We plan to continue to measure the impact of our efforts by participating in industry benchmarks, collecting more diversity data, and analysing engagement surveys to understand different experiences. We will continue to celebrate and create a sense of community.

Advice for Other Organisations

Our advice to organisations looking to enhance their DEI efforts:

1. Know your ‘why’ – why is DEI important to your organisation?
2. Set the vision – where do you want to be on DEI?
3. Who is accountable – are your leaders accountable for driving DEI forward or does it sit elsewhere in the business?
4. Identify the challenges or obstacles – what would stand in the way of achieving your vision?
5. Establish your priorities – DEI is a vast field; where will you focus your efforts in the short and medium term based on your workforce or industry?
6. Decide the metrics – what data (qualitative and quantitative) sources can you use to track your progress?
7. Local vs global – are your plans flexible enough to take into account local nuance?

Learn More: https://www.ethnicityawards.com/top-10-network-groups-erg-2024/