Of course, blind assessments aren t always failsafe.
Walker Morris has said it is reviewing its diversity processes after it confirmed it had awarded a training contract to the Managing Partner s child.
The Leeds firm, which has 230 fee-earners, picked Managing Partner Malcolm Simpson s offspring as one of 15 trainees who will be joining the firm in an upcoming cohort.
Simpson has occupied several senior positions at the firm including heading up Walker Morris’s US practice and chairing its international committee. He was a partner in the firm s commercial team for 17 years before winning the top job in 2018.
Simpson Jr was lucky enough to obtain a work experience placement at Walker Morris in 2014, and a spot on a vacation scheme this February before securing a sought-after training contract.
By Trevor Sterling2020-12-18T14:30:00+00:00
For law firms, increasing the numbers of black and minority ethnic (BAME) lawyers and ensuring they get the same chances to progress in their careers has been a focus point for some time. In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement has gained momentum around the world, the spotlight is very much on race issues in our profession as in the wider world. We need to be asking ourselves, does the legal sector have a race problem, and if so, what more can be done to tackle it?
Trevor Sterling
The latest analysis by the Solicitors Regulations Authority shows that BAME lawyers account for around a fifth of all lawyers working in law firms and that a similar proportion of partners are BAME – seemingly not too bad considering that 13% of the workforce at large identifies as BAME. However, closer inspection of the figures reveals that just 3% are black, and that both black and Asian lawyers are significantly under-represented at partnership