2025 pay gap report

At a time when society is demanding greater accountability, fairness and transparency, the need to talk openly and honestly about diversity, equity and inclusion has never been clearer – or more pressing. There is growing recognition that organisations must take a long‑term, evidence‑based approach to building equity, and that progress depends on both structural change and sustained cultural commitment.

As a firm we continue to embrace this responsibility with the same discipline and rigour we apply to every strategic priority. Pay gap reporting remains an important tool we have to understand our workforce, identify inequalities and take meaningful action to address them. We have published pay gap reports annually since 2017, and each year we have chosen to go beyond mandatory gender reporting by voluntarily sharing our ethnicity, disability and social mobility pay gaps, helping to provide a fuller and more intersectional view of our progress. This year, we have added our LGBTQ+ pay gap for the first time.

Our annual pay gap report reflects both the advancements we have made and the areas where further focus is needed. We are proud of the steps taken to strengthen our data maturity, deepen our analysis and build the enablers that support equitable progression. At the same time, we recognise, as many organisations do, that efforts to diversify our pipeline and open access to the legal profession can, in the short term, influence pay gap metrics. This is a natural part of long‑term change and reinforces the importance of transparency, patience and persistence. We are proud of the progress we have made over the last year and below are some of our key highlights:

• We concluded our Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Nottingham and Innovate UK making improvements to our appraisal, promotion and recruitment processes.

• Women represented 60% of all senior leadership promotions this year, reflecting the impact of our continued focus on equitable progression.

• We increased the maturity and visibility of our employee resource groups (ERGs), positioning them as key communities that support our people and actively drive forward our DEI strategy. We also launched a new social mobility network and over 30% of our firm mare members of one of our DEI networks.

• We elevated employee engagement through stronger listening and feedback channels, embedding regular surveys, launching a national and local office forums across the firm Participation in our annual. Your Voice survey increased to 73%, helping us sustain an exceptionally strong 88% engagement score across the firm and demonstrating consistently positive results year on year.

• We improved our onboarding experience, strengthening post‑induction integration and increasing transparency around career pathways, pay, reward, benefits sand promotion processes.

• We expanded and delivered access programmes that remove barriers and accelerate representation in the legal sector, including continued growth of our FAIRE and REACH mentoring programmes.

• We enhanced our firmwide DEI training launching a new “understanding…” series to build wider awareness and advocacy around topics such as masculinities in the workplace, neurodiversity support, disability awareness, antisemitism and accent bias.

• We significantly strengthened our diversity data capability, launching a new firmwide platform that achieved over 90% colleague participation giving us our most comprehensive and reliable dataset to date.

• We delivered our social mobility incubator externally, sharing our expertise and supporting 79 organisations to design and build effective approaches to improving social mobility.

As global conversations about equity evolve, so too does our determination to learn, adapt and continue making progress.

You can read more about our diversity, equity and inclusion plans in this report.

Download 2025 report