According to an article published last week, City law firms' efforts to become more diverse and inclusive are a form of "reputation laundering," offering only the illusion of change to protect their privileges and rewards. Dr. Louise Ashley, an associate professor at Queen Mary University London, argues that the "passionate commitment" of some individuals within firms to change cannot match "institutional inertia."
Dr. Ashley spoke to 400 City professionals, around a third of them lawyers, for her book Highly Discriminating: Why the City isn't fair, and diversity doesn't work. She said that City firms use "class-based recruitment strategies," which sustain "the impression of status and prestige" while helping "justify the high fees they charge and the exceptional profits they generate."
At the entry level, City firms battled to attract graduates from the UK's most elite universities. "This 'war for talent' is largely phony – in reality, the skills the firms need are available from a much wider cohort of graduates – but it has helped convince City firms and clients of these employees' exceptional worth."
Dr. Ashley said that if any unfair recruitment practices or treatment of employees came to light, City firms typically employed the shield of "unconscious bias" to explain away discrepancies. "This response can suggest a sort of 'no-fault discrimination,' where since everybody is to blame, nobody is."
Dr. Ashley said there was "no evidence" that unconscious bias training delivered significant improvements for under-represented groups. However, it had become "incredibly fashionable," and "once one organization takes it up, the others do." She added: "The City needs to be much more open and reflective on who benefits from inequalities and why. It is not a coincidence that the City is beset with inequalities. It is founded on them."
