Recruiters are playing a major part in tackling diversity issues in the legal profession, following a row which flared last year.

Major law firm Eversheds has teamed up with three legal recruitment agencies following its call last year for recruitment agencies to do more to ensure that candidate pools for legal roles reflected greater diversity (Recruiter, 25 June 2008).

The initiative involves recruiters First Counsel, Shilton Sharpe Quarry and Taylor Root asking candidates to complete a diversity questionnaire when registering. Although all three recruiters have been monitoring diversity separately, Mark Brandon, from the private practice team at First Counsel, says “the initiative has assisted us clarify and standardise with other recruiters”. Gary Jones, from the business support team at First Counsel, added: “The whole point of this for us is to raise the awareness internally of who is getting in touch and what their backgrounds are.

“It was felt this standardisation was important to assist with the law firms’ data collection,” he added.

Nick Root (below), founding partner of Taylor Root, told Recruiter that although his firm has been doing this for years, “it’s good to find out more about how diverse the candidate pool is in reality”. He added: “It’s a very long-term project which ultimately can help the profession discover how to change this pool.”

Gavin Sharpe of Shilton Sharpe Quarry agreed. “We’re trying to find a collective response to the issue. But before we can come up with an answer, we have to see what type of people are coming through our doors. We need to understand the pool of candidates coming to the legal recruiters.

“Law firms should visit the ‘red-brick’ universities to attract a more diverse group,” he told Recruiter
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Root believes that longer term, the legal profession needs to attract students before university. “Kids should be educated about law from an earlier age to attract those who wouldn’t normally think about law as a career,” he said.