Law chiefs press for diversity policies but stop short of demanding hard facts

Law firms pitching to Britain’s top companies will increasingly be asked to disclose policies on equal opportunities, but research by Legal Week indicates that top general counsel are still rarely asking for hard data from advisers.

A group of bluechip general counsel contacted by Legal Week found that many are ready to ask law firms to disclose non-legal information such as diversity policies when putting together panels.
However, few in-house teams are ready to follow in the footsteps of Barclays, which last year asked its advisers to provide statistics on the ethnic and gender make-up of their staff during its panel review.

Barclays general counsel Mark Harding commented: "We wanted to make sure that [our advisers] had thought about the issue, had procedures in place and were doing something to track the progress."
Reuters also last year asked its advisers for information on diversity during its panel review but stopped short of requesting hard data on firms’ staff make-up.

However, some UK corporate counsel contacted by Legal Week argued that bolstering diversity in their own teams needed to be addressed before pressing the matter with outside counsel.
"Clients’ expectations are becoming stronger but both sides find it difficult to meet their [diversity] targets," commented one senior in-house lawyer at a FTSE 100 company.

However, Harding said that one reason he decided to take a stronger line with his panel firms was out of a need to improve his own depart-ment’s showing on diversity.

"As we are looking to try to broaden our representation of some minority groups, we realised that unless the law firms are doing their stuff, the pool from which we fish is going to be restricted," he said.

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