Stevens & Bolton is committed to providing equal opportunities and encouraging diversity and inclusion in employment. It is the firm’s policy to promote an environment free from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
Our policies and practices apply to all stages of the recruitment process, and to the development and promotion of employees during their career at the firm.
We are committed to treating individuals fairly and giving everyone an equal chance. We believe that it is important to constantly promote an inclusive culture that encourages everyone to realise their full potential and to be themselves at work, and that through that approach comes true teamwork and strength.
A key diversity challenge for many large law firms is the gender balance at senior levels of the firm. At Stevens & Bolton, 38% of our partners are women (as a comparison, the UK law firm average is 27-33%). To see full details of our diversity statistics for 2019 please click here
We are a member of The Law Society’s Diversity and Inclusion charter, a public commitment by legal practices to promote the values of diversity, equality and inclusion throughout their firm.
Our strategy
To support our diversity and inclusion commitment, we engaged consultants from The Inclusive Group to help us understand how we could better improve diversity and inclusion at the firm. Employees have participated in focus groups and shared ideas. As a result, a Diversity and Inclusion Forum has been established, consisting of more than 25 individuals from across the firm, including secretaries, trainees, associates, partners, and those working in our business services teams. The D&I Forum inputs into the firm’s strategic plans and acts to implement a Diversity and Inclusion action plan. Four sub-groups of the Forum have been established to progress the identified areas for action at specified milestones during that period.
The sub-groups are supported by Forum members Jenny Robertson, a partner in the corporate team who acts as the firm’s diversity partner, and Amanda Rose, Head of HR and L&D. Jenny and Amanda regularly report to the firm’s management board and strategy board on priorities and progress of the Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, and help the management and strategy boards to take D&I issues into account in their decision-making.
The firm’s vision is to be an inclusive firm that embraces diversity and nurtures and rewards talent and we are committed to achieving that vision.
Jenny Robertson
The internal communications sub-group of the D&I Forum produces a quarterly D&I newsletter to communicate the status of the action points in the plan, key dates and activities, relevant webinars and articles and people news around the firm. One of the recent articles was a report from Helen Martin on “diversity in the time of COVID” following her attendance at the IBA “Virtually Together” conference, which is available to read here.
Our diversity and inclusion initiatives
Outlined below are the various initiatives we have taken to promote meaningful change and to allow our workspace to be as diverse and inclusive as possible.