The Strategic Use of Demand‐side Diversity Pressure in the Solicitors' Profession
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Author | Joanne P. Braithwaite |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00514.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 37, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2010
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 442±65
The Strategic Use of Demand-side Diversity Pressure in the
Solicitors' Profession
Joanne P. Braithwaite*
There has been a long line of official initiatives seeking to address the
poor record of the solicitors' profession on diversity. One of the latest,
the Law Society's 2009 Diversity Charter and Protocol, attempts to
harness client pressure as a way of bringing about change. The
objective of the paper is to assess this strategic use of `demand-side
diversity pressure' in the solicitors' profession, contextualizing the
strategy and using different perspectives to assess it. The paper first
considers the strategy as a development of `business case' arguments
for diversity and explores the implications of scholarly objections to
this approach. Secondly, the paper uses empirical data from the City
law firm sector to explore the nature and practical effects of demand-
side diversity pressures within law firms. I conclude by considering the
prospects of the Law Society's scheme having a meaningful effect,
factoring in the possible effects of the ongoing global economic crisis.
INTRODUCTION
The `diversity approach' to issues of equality in the workplace has achieved
great prominence in practice,
1
including in the context of the solicitors'
442
ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Law Department, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London
WC2A 2AE, England
j.p.braithwaite@lse.ac.uk
Thanks to Professors Kate Malleson and Lizzie Barmes of Queen Mary, University of
London and anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. The
author presented a paper on an earlier form of the Law Society's Diversity Charter at the
Queen Mary, University of London workshop, `Crafting effective interventions in pursuit
of equality and diversity', and thanks the workshop participants for their comments on
that occasion. Errors remain the author's own. The law is stated as at March 2010.
1The `diversity approach' is discussed in detail in G. Kirton and A. Greene, The
Dynamics of Managing Diversity: A Critical Approach (2005, 2nd edn.). For
analysis of its influence generally see Ruth erford and Ollerearnshaw, who
profession, where a long line of official initiatives has reflected its `market-
orientated'
2
logic. The latest such development is a Law Society scheme
which attempts to link diversity and profit by promoting client pressure as a
driver of change. The exogenous client pressure which this scheme intends
to encourage, organize, and exert upon law firms may, borrowing from
Wilkins's analysis of the `demand-side perspective', usefully be thought of
as `demand-side diversity pressure'.
3
In this article I contextualize the
strategic use of such pressures in the solicitors' profession and use different
perspectives to assess the Law Society's scheme which seeks to promote
them.
The effectiveness of this strategy is an important and pressing issue
because, despite certain profound changes going on in the solicitors' profes-
sion (there are, for instance, ten times more women in the solicitors' profes-
sion in 2009 than 1984
4
), its record on diversity remains poor.
5
It is still the
443
concluded (in 2002 work) that `the past five years has seen private and public sector
organisations refocusing their energies on diversity and making it a business
priority': S. Rutherford and S. Ollerearnshaw, The Business of Diversity: How
organisations in the public and private sectors are integrating equality and diversity
to enhance business performance (2002) 19. See, also, Kirton and Greene, id., pp.
199±200 and 205 and the argument that `diversity thinking' has taken a `deep hold
. . . on Governments, employers and the wider world', made in Nabarro, The perils
of UK anti-discrimination law: Nabarro Review of Law and Practice on Diversity
(2007) 3.
2J.Webb, `The Politics of Equal Opportunity' (1997) 4 Gender, Work and
Organisation 163.
3 Wilkins's research into the experiences of black lawyers in United States corporate
law firms has, amongst other contributions, drawn attention to this `demand-side
perspective'. See, for example, D. Wilkins, `Valuing Diversity: Some cautionary
lessons from the American experience' in Managing the Modern Law Firm,ed. L.
Empson (2007) 48; D. Wilkins and G. Gulati, `Why are there so few black lawyers
in corporate law firms? An institutional analysis' (1996) 84 California Law Rev.
496. On this issue Wilkins cites R. Gilson, `The Devolution of the Legal Profession:
A Demand Side Perspective' (1990) 49 Maryland Law Rev. 872, in D. Wilkins, `Do
Clients Have Ethical Obligations to Lawyers? Some Lessons from the Diversity
Wars' (1997±8) 11 Georgetown J. of Legal Ethics 855, fn. 9.
4Asat31July 2009 there were 52,162 women solicitors with practising certificates
(`PCs') and 63,313 men: Law Society, Annual Statistical Report (2009) 9. In 1984
there were 5,176 women holding PCs and 39,658 men: Law Society, Annual
Statistical Report (1987) 6. (Upon qualification solicitors are entered on a Roll
maintained by the Law Society, but they also need an annually renewed PC issued
by the Law Society in order to act as a solicitor.)
5There are, of course, difficulties associated with using the term `diversity'. Here, the
discussion of the `diversity' record of the profession is framed by reference to
particular `strands' of diversity, or group identities. As has been acknowledged in
the literature, this framework sits rather awkwardly with the argument that a central
feature of the `diversity approach' (see the text accompanying n. 1 above) is the
focus on individuals rather than on group identity (see, for example, the discussion
of this tension in D. Cooper, Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the
Value of Difference (2004) and L. Barmes and S. Ashtiany, Diversity in the City:
ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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