TLT’s gender and ethnicity pay gap report 2023

TLT has published results of its seventh gender pay gap revealing the lowest recorded pay gap since the firm first began reporting.

The report shows that the firm’s mean and median employee pay gaps decreased, to 9.0% and 9.1% in 2023, from 16.3% and 25.9% in 2022, and from 17.8% and 27.6% in 2021 respectively.

In addition to firmwide progress, this year’s report also reveals a tightening of the pay gap for other legal and business services – whereby the mean pay gap has decreased from 12.4% to 5.4%. We also recorded a negative median pay gap of -0.8% for the first time in this area.

When viewing the pay gap for lawyers, the media has stayed broadly the same with a 0.5% decrease whilst the mean has dropped 3.7% to 0.7%, for the first time.

These positive results showcase the progress the firm has made in addressing gender imbalances across the pay quartiles.

As reported in previous years, the report reveals the biggest influencing factor impacting the gender pay gap is the number of men in higher paid roles.  As of April 2023, although women are represented in greater numbers than men in every quartile across the pay scales, the proportion of men in the upper quartile (28.4%) relative to their population size is greater than the proportion of women (23.6%). The reverse is also true in the lower quartile where women are proportionately overrepresented (25.4%) relative to their population size and compared with their male counterparts, who are underrepresented (24%). 

This announcement follows a milestone year for the firm, during which it announced achieving 33% female representation at partner level and set a new target to see 50% women in partner roles by 2029. In 2023, TLT also introduced free menopause testing for all women, alongside an initiative designed to help colleagues going through menopause and targeted policy improvements including a new pregnancy loss policy, covering paid leave. Achievements in 2023 culminated in TLT being included in The Times Top 50 employers for gender equality.

The firm also revealed TLT has improved ethnic diversity across the firm, with representation increasing by 3.4% in the 2022 to 2023 reporting year.

It's positive to note TLT has seen a decrease in both the ethnicity mean and median pay gap by 8.3% and 2.4% respectively. This is attributed to there being an increased number of ethnically diverse colleagues across the firm.  

As in previous years, the majority of ethnically diverse colleagues sit within the lower and lower middle pay quartile. However, representation within the upper quartile has increased (13.1% in April 2023 vs 7.9% in April 2022). And 13.1% is also aligned more closely to the overall breakdown of ethnically diverse colleagues (16.1%) than in previous years.   

In the last year, TLT launched several initiatives as part of our commitment to improving ethnic diversity in higher paid roles, in order to close the ethnicity pay gap. These have included: 

• Announcing a target to achieve 35% ethnic minority representation across early career roles (trainees and apprentices) by October 2030 – driving an increase in ethnically diverse representation in early career roles from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3.  
• Implementing a set of new safeguards covering pay, progression and retention - including mandatory reviews on any ethnically diverse colleague exits or resignations, promotion shortlists and pay reviews, to enable the appropriate preventative interventions.  

Helen Hodgkinson, chief people officer, commented: “I’m proud of the work we’ve done so far to make TLT an inclusive and forward-thinking place to work. These figures and results over the past year show changes are happening, and things are moving forward in the right direction.   

“But we are aware there is more to do, so we are constantly striving to find new ways to put equality and diversity at the forefront of our plans for the future. We know that by creating a more diverse workplace we’ll make it a better place for everyone – colleagues and clients alike.”

Download the full report here.