Fostering a more diverse organisation is now high on the agenda for most large businesses and law firms in both the UK and the US. These organisations are realising that having a diversity policy in place, however eloquently written, is not sufficient to effectively promote diversity. Instead, they realise that they need to make diversity an intrinsic part of a fair and equitable work culture.
The catalyst for creating a more diverse workplace has come not from law firms, but from external forces. On both sides of the Atlantic, those external influences include changing demographics and pressure from diversity-conscious companies such as Barclays, UBS, Starbucks as well as professional organisations such as the Law Society and the American Bar Association (ABA).
