Irwin Mitchell’s Posts Gender Pay Gap Significantly Lower Than Industry Average

Irwin Mitchell has announced its latest gender pay gap figures which show an improvement on last year and are significantly lower than the previous industry average.

The law firm’s mean gender pay gap is 12.8% (consistent with the 2017 figure) while the median gender pay gap is 12% (3.9% lower than the 2017 figure). Both of these figures are lower than last year’s average gender pay gap across the top 50 UK law firms* (legal industry average mean pay gap was 20.5% with the median 29%) and lower than many well-known brands and large business.

Irwin Mitchell is committed to improving its diversity further still both in relation to pay and the general population of the Group. In the last six months more than 500 Irwin Mitchell colleagues have changed their work pattern to work more flexibly. The firm has also introduced Unconscious Bias training and blind candidate screening for graduate and apprenticeship recruitment.

Expert Opinion

“Although our results are again positive, and show an overall improvement from last year’s report, we recognise that there’s still work to do.

“We’re committed to fairness, equality and inclusion, and our aim is for everyone to be able to build a successful career with us. We perform well against the legal industry average in terms of gender diversity but that does not mean we can become complacent and we are working hard to make improvements across all areas of diversity both in relation to pay and the overall population of the firm.

“Our client feedback is excellent and that reflects how hard our people are working so it is crucial that we engage and look after our colleagues so that they can focus on their work helping our clients.”
Andrew Tucker - CEO

Across Irwin Mitchell LLP 73% of colleagues are women while 44% of the firm’s partners and 30% of the Executive Board are women. 

Last year Irwin Mitchell was one of only a few law firm’s to share its Partner gender pay data and has again published its figures which are also lower than last year. Partner mean gender pay gap is 5.5% (5.9% lower than the 2017 figure) with the median Partner gender pay gap being 8.8% (6.2% lower than the 2017 figure).

Irwin Mitchell’s mean gender bonus gap is 31.9% (median 38.3%) which differs from the pay gap calculation, as it is based on the number of colleagues who receive a bonus and the differing amounts paid. The bonus gap doesn’t take into account part time hours / pro rata calculations and so as 90% of part-time colleagues are women, this has an impact on the % figure. Small bonus and thank you payments made through our regular colleague recognition scheme and impact the figures.

The percentage of men and women receiving a bonus is favourable to women, with 56% of women receiving a bonus in 2018 compared to 52% of men.

The report can be downloaded from here

*Legal industry average taken from Legal Week data posted in July 2018.