IHL webinar: Conversations with clients – D&I

As a part of our conversations with clients webinar series, Angela Yotov, Group General Counsel of Close Brothers Group, joined Priti Bansel-Branch, Assistant General Counsel and Sophie Cowen, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Shoosmiths, to discuss what IHL teams can practically do to deliver D&I initiatives.

Watch the webinar video

What is the driving force behind your commitment to D&I?

Angela

• It is important to have an environment where people can thrive, be themselves and be respected and valued and not having to mask who they are
• Leaders make better decisions when there is cognitive diversity so they can hear diverse points of view, different ideas from people with different backgrounds and experiences
• It’s important as a leader to find out what motivates and drives your team, people have lives outside of work and understanding what is important assists with this
• Having a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old who has recently been diagnosed with autism, as well as having experience as a carer, Angela found it challenging to juggle a demanding role and responsibilities at home
• Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, she felt strongly that there needed to be some solidarity with other people on a similar boat and set up some virtual coffees for those in the Working Parents and Carers network. It was great to hear from other people going through the same thing,hear other people’s perspectives and learn about the resources the company had in place etc.
• Everyone has a responsibility to educate themselves – she participates in ‘mutual mentorship’ where members of their LGBTQ+ and diversity networks have spoken about the use of language, unconscious bias and microaggressions which has enabled her to be a better ally

Priti and Sophie  

• We at Shoosmiths focus on reciprocal mentoring with board members and employee networks so there’s something in it for each side and a great learning opportunity. It’s something that’s relatively simple to implement within teams and gets tangible results quickly

How are Close Brothers implementing D&I as an in-house legal team across your operations and the legal services that you procure? 

Angela

• Partnerships they have at a Close Brothers level and they feed into those and participate i.e. 
  • 30% Club
  • Black Interns
  • upRreach
  • Stonewall 
  • Race at Work Charter
  • Women in Finance 
• Are also signatories of the General Counsel for Diversity and Inclusion across the legal industry 
  • A group representing the in-house legal functions of a number of major corporations who have come together to support increasing meaningful diversity and inclusion across the legal profession, whether in in-house practices, in law firms and recruiters.
• Collaboration is key – maintaining dialogue with relationship partners 

Sophie

• There is no one ‘silver bullet’ solution to this D&I area of work – it’s about collaboration and how you can work together with your legal service providers and clients to impact the industry more widely,  whether that be through co-collaborating on internships or cross-mentoring
• We had a question around the difference between diversity and inclusion – diversity is about that representation that can be really broad i.e. protected characteristics or the cognitive difference. 
• Inclusion is ensuring those people feel like they belong, that they can contribute openly and freely and progress
• Diversity is the snapshot data and inclusion is how everyone has a seat at that table to contribute 

How do you think in-house teams and private practice can work together to drive change for everyone for the legal sector? 

Angela

• Mutual mentoring – a safe space to ask questions to understand the perspective of others in that area
• Technical training in areas like D&I is really important to help people understand different perspectives, something that law firms can help in-house teams with
• To the extent it’s appropriate in terms of expertise, put diverse teams together for transactions etc because of their different backgrounds and perspectives 

What training have you received from private practice teams/ external counsel – which one’s have worked well for you? 

Angela

• Nothing specifically D&I related but lots of technical training and some soft skills
• Starting to see talks on neurodiversity but nothing prevalent
• Good opportunity for law firms to talk to legal teams/ wider business about it

Can you give examples of KPI’s that have been useful in determining progress in this space, in relation to your external counsel? 

Angela

• The metrics generally are some of the initiatives that we’re doing in terms of social diversity, and with respect to different types of protected characteristics 
• Step back and look at how matters have progressed over the year 

Sophie

• You can use engagement score metrics so not solely focussing on representation data within teams
• Looking at progression and promotion rates – is it reflective of your population or is there a demographic that is progressing at a quicker rate than others
• Looking at retention of people is a good indicator of inclusion – if people stick around or choose to leave can be quite telling on whether more work is required on inclusion

How have you approached the challenge of obtaining demographic data and people not wanting to identify or represent? 

Angela

• It’s a challenge – even people ticking the ‘I don’t want to say’ box helps with getting a better understand of what your work force looks like
• It’s about people gradually becoming more comfortable and feeling that the firm and society at large is accepting of the area they affiliate with so they are more willing to state what protected characteristics they may have in a work environment

Sophie

• It’s personal information so building trust is key – you must be transparent about why you’re asking for that data and what it’s going to be used for 
• All large private practice firms must disclose their diversity data to the SRA on a bi-annual basis and make it available on their external website so good place to start if you’re looking at different organisations to work with