Apply now!Diversity at Lewis Silkin
Find out why diversity is so important at Lewis Silkin and read about their initiatives below.
Our firm is named after Lewis Silkin, whose story of social mobility continues to inspire us. His family were refugees from Lithuania and he was brought up in poverty, but qualified as a solicitor before becoming an MP and eventually sitting in the House of Lords. This history is at the core of our culture and our values and it drives our commitment to ensure that access to the legal profession is open and fair and that the profession itself is diverse and socially inclusive.
More broadly, we recognise that a more diverse and inclusive workplace allows for a plethora of ideas, thoughts and skillsets, a variety of points of view that can generate broader discussions and result in innovation, enhanced client service and a stronger and more cohesive team.
We are proud of the diverse range of people within Lewis Silkin and culture of bravery and kindness that allows individuals to be themselves at work, ensuring we provide the best possible service to our clients. We are proud of the diverse range of people within Lewis Silkin and culture of bravery and kindness that allows individuals to be themselves at work, ensuring we provide the best possible service to our clients. All colleagues are encouraged to complete 30 hours a year of responsible business and/or DE&I work.
A number of DEI groups are active across the firm - Gender, Age, Race and Ethnicity, Social Mobility, Lewis SilkOut (LGBTQ+), Disability, Wellbeing, and Interfaith – supported by our DEI Board and DEI & Wellbeing Lead.
We also have four Responsible Business groups that colleagues can join – Pro bono, Charity & Fundraising, Sustainability and Education & Social Mobility – supported by our Responsible Business Executive Committee and Responsible Business & Sustainability team.
We use Rare Recruitment's Contextual Recruitment System (CRS) to consider every student's achievements in context, helping to identify those with the greatest potential, from all backgrounds.
Recent progress on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI):
- We are 7th in the UK on the Social Mobility Index, which ranks UK employers according to changes they are making to how they find, recruit and advance talented employees from less privileged backgrounds
- We remain committed to widening access to the legal profession. During the year we delivered 31 careers outreach sessions in schools in areas of low social mobility, with 700 students in total in attendance. Almost 60 students participated in our flagship Mentoring Scheme, a nine-month programme for students aged 16-18 whom attend school in social mobility cold spots
- We continue to have equal representation of men and women at board level and in our senior leadership roles, and women have made up 69% of internal Partner promotions over the past two years
- In 2024, we introduced our New Parent Policy, which makes all new parents employed in our firm – irrespective of role or gender – eligible for a full twelve months’ leave and six months’ full pay
- Our Solicitor Apprenticeship scheme is successfully providing an alternative route to qualifying as a solicitor at Lewis Silkin, helping us to attract a more diverse range of candidates to the firm. We currently have five apprentices on our programme who will eventually qualify as a solicitor via this route and will be recruiting a further two apprentices in 2025
- In 2023 we published our social mobility pay gap report for the first time and recently published our 2024 report
Our commitments
- We are a signatory to The Law Society’s Diversity and Inclusion Charter, the leading diversity initiative of the legal profession
- We are a legal partner to The Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion
- We are a signatory to The Law Society’s Women in Law Pledge
- Our gender goals are for 45% of partners to be women by 2027, to achieve gender balance in leadership and other fee-earning roles and to reduce our gender pay gap by 40% (from its 2019 levels) by 2027
- We have signed up to the PRIME Commitment, a scheme offering quality work experience to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. We have provided work experience to 6 students via this scheme over the past two years.
- We have been an accredited Living Wage Employer since 2012, and we extend this to outsourced services
- We are a founding member of the inter-law LGBT network group, LeGalBesT
- We work with MyPlus to support students and graduates with disabilities land their dream job
Awards related to DE&I
We recently won ‘DEI Firm of the Year’ at the Legal 500 Northern Powerhouse awards.
We were recently named as finalist in three categories of the UK Social Mobility Awards, including the most prestigious category – Organisation of the Year. There are also two nominations for individual colleagues: Partner, Cliff Fluet – Mentor of the Year and Associate, Craig Turner – Rising Star.
In 2024, at the Women, Influence & Power Awards, we were shortlisted for ‘ESG initiative of the year’ in relation to the sustainability and organisational culture aspects of our move to our new London office. One of our Associates, Sophie Jamieson, was also shortlisted for a ‘Rising Star’ award for her work to improve social mobility in the legal sector and we were shortlisted for ‘Social Mobility Firm of the Year’.
In 2023, Sophie Jameson, Associate, won the ‘Highly Commended and Gold Award’ in the Rising Star category at the UK Social Mobility Awards. Sophie founded our Cold Spot Outreach Programme, which delivers remote and in-person careers events to students in Year 10 and upwards in areas of low social mobility.
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