Diversity & Inclusion

Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan underpins our commitment to creating an inclusive workplace culture where all of our colleagues feel a sense of belonging and are enabled to thrive.

Our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive culture

Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is integrated into our policies, processes and day-to-day decisions – for our colleagues, clients, and communities alike.

Disability Confident: Guidance for Applicants

Embedding DE&I across our organisation

We continue to focus on five priority areas:

Inclusive communities: aligning network groups, volunteering and Early Careers programmes to support under-represented young people
Client experience: partnering with clients on DE&I initiatives and sharing best practice
Inclusive culture: fostering an environment where everyone can be themselves, act as allies, and raise concerns safely
Visible leadership: supporting leaders to embed inclusive behaviours into their work
Fair processes: ensuring consistency and equity across our systems

We maintain a zero-tolerance culture towards discrimination, bullying, and harassment, and our policies, processes and practices strive to ensure that inclusion is a lived experience for all, regardless of identity.

Making progress through a data led approach

We take a data-driven approach to inclusion, regularly reviewing our diversity metrics and benchmarking against sector standards. As part of this, we’ve implemented targeted interventions to support recruitment, development, and retention of colleagues from underrepresented groups, as well as completing a review of our workplace adjustments process.

We also share our diversity data with organisations such as the Interlaw Diversity Forum as part of the UK Model Diversity Survey and report to the SRA as per compliance regulations.

Recent milestones:

Achieving Disability Confident Leader (Level 3) status, validated by Business Disability Forum.
Relaunching our Reciprocal Mentoring Programme, pairing colleagues from underrepresented groups with senior leaders to foster mutual learning and drive change.
Publishing our Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Reports.

SRA report

Empowering through networks and partnerships

Our seven D&I networks—many founded over 15 years ago—play a vital role in raising awareness, promoting conversation, and guiding policy development. These include:

IM Able – supporting colleagues who are disabled, neurodivergent and with long-term health conditions
IM Equal – promoting LGBTQ+ inclusion
IM Aspiring – tackling social mobility in the legal sector
IM Families – supporting work-life balance and diverse family structures
IM Generations – addressing age and generational related inclusion
IM Powered – supporting gender equity in the workplace
IM Respect – celebrating ethnicity, faith and culture

We also collaborate with external partners such as Evenbreak, Inclusive Employers, and Business Disability Forum to ensure our initiatives are expert led.

Celebrating inclusion and culture

Through our Life at Irwin Mitchell campaign, we celebrate the diverse journeys of our colleagues and spotlight initiatives that drive inclusion. Between events, storytelling campaigns and inclusive conversations, we use our platforms to amplify voices and foster allyship across the firm

Listen to Angela Jackman KC (Hon)