Recognition and partnerships

We have had partners and employees named on Empower’s Top 100 Leading Ethnic Minority Executives list and Future Leaders list.

We have had partners listed on the Heroes top 100 Leading Female Executives list.

In 2024, we ranked 5th in the Top 75 Social Mobility Employer Index which lists the UK employers who have taken the most action to improve social mobility in the workplace.

We received the ‘Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion’ award at the Law Society Excellence Awards 2017 for our work on ethnic minority inclusion. We were shortlisted for the award for our sponsorship of the Old Vic’s production of “Sylvia” in 2019.

In 2024, we ranked 16th in Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers List. The list is the UK’s leading ranking of employers that are committed to supporting their LGBTQ+ employees and the firm received a gold award in recognition of its work to create a welcoming, inclusive workplace for the community.

We are members of the 30% Club - a voluntary, business-led organisation that campaigns for at least 30% female representation on the Boards and Executive committees of companies. We also provide mentors and mentees for the cross-organisational mentoring scheme run for high-potential women.

We launched the Law Springboard programme in partnership with upReach in 2019. It is designed to improve access to the legal sector for high potential undergraduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds. We have supported over 450 students to date though the programme and continue to run this annually.

We are proud to be signatories to the Valuable 500, a global movement putting disability on the business leadership agenda. This initiative aims to ignite systemic change through profiling leaders and businesses who are championing disability inclusion.

The 93% Club is a student-run charity that aims to provide opportunities and a network for state-educated university students in the UK. The partnership helps us to meet a network of students at universities across the UK. 

Slaughter and May is a founding member of 93% Professionals - an online and in-person community for state-educated professionals, powered by The 93% Club. Recognising that the workplace culture can, at times, feel unfamiliar for some, and to complement our existing diversity and inclusion efforts, our partnership with The 93% Club provides state-educated colleagues with a community of peers to support them as they enter and progress at work.

We were one of the first law firms to collaborate with Rare more than 15 years ago and we have recruited many work experience students and trainee solicitors through our sponsorship and involvement with their programmes, which currently include their Articles (Black heritage) and Advocate (social mobility and ethnicity) programmes.

We are the first Magic Circle law firm to become Platinum Sponsors of Women in the City Afro-Caribbean Network and host a range of networking and interview skills sessions for their members. 

We have sponsored the Black Counsel Forum since 2022 which equips Black heritage lawyers with practical road-tested strategies to help them navigate their careers successfully and network with experienced barristers and solicitors. 

In October 2021, we spearheaded a collaboration with seven other founding firms, to launch Legal CORE, the first leadership-led, cross-firm collective aimed at tackling the underrepresentation of ethnic minority groups in the UK’s legal sector.

We are proud to be one of six law firms that have collaborated, with both funding and pro bono support, to assist with the development and launch of BEO, the UK’s new national and independent Black British civil rights organisation, created to advance justice and equity for Black people in Britain.

We partner with 10,000 Black Interns, an initiative that aims to transform the horizon and prospects of young Black people in the UK by offering paid work experience across a wide range of industries, as well as world-class training and development.

We are a member firm of NOTICED, the UK’s first collaborative inter-law firm diversity network aimed at promoting opportunities to integrate, celebrate and educate on diversity across the legal sector, with a particular focus on ethnic minorities within the profession. The firm co-hosted a panel discussion on ‘Women in Law: Progression in Leadership’. 

We are active members of this client-led commitment to promote diversity, equity and inclusion across corporations and law firms. 

The Halo Code explicitly protects Black employees who come to work with natural hair and protective hairstyles associated with their racial, ethnic, and cultural identities.

By adopting the Halo Code, we are proactively taking a stand to ensure that no member of their community faces barriers or judgments because of their Afro-textured hair. You can read the Halo Code workplace commitment in full here.

The Times open letter is a commitment by businesses to hold themselves to account to tangible measures on Black inclusion. We are signatories alongside more than 30 CEOs.