Allyship through amplification: How choices make culture

Last month our Head of Diversity, Careers and Outreach, Lindsay Jack, delivered the closing keynote address, ‘Allyship through Amplification’, at the Association of Law Teachers 60^th anniversary Annual Conference. Now, Lindsay reflects on the experience and shares why you should prioritise amplifying the stories of underrepresented and marginalised voices.

When invited to deliver the closing keynote address at a national annual conference it is difficult to choose the more prevalent feeling between nervousness and pride. I said yes, gave space to both, and set about the task I had been given - reflecting on two decades of work on widening participation in the legal profession and education. When contemplating the conference theme of ‘Law Schools as a Place of Useful Learning’ there seemed to me to be an obvious place to start – a place of useful learning for whom? Working through this idea allowed me to make the link to allyship through amplification, an idea that I had been developing as I deepened my understanding of allyship in recent years.

To me this is the next vital step, not just in higher education but in the wider legal sector.  Allyship in and of itself relies on us standing with and standing up for people whose identities and backgrounds do not match our own. So, then, surely allyship without amplification is just good friendship? We need to DO something with what we learn about others. We need to be intentional, and call attention to doing this work in order that we amplify allyship itself. When we do this, we highlight the power allyship can have and we take the work to a new level. We encourage others to see the part they can play in lifting unheard, under-represented and marginalised voices.

“Allyship without amplification is just good friendship. We need to DO something with what we learn about others.”

To amplify allyship, you need to take time to understand who is being affected and what roadblocks might be in place that mean under-represented and marginalised voices aren’t being seen or, in the worst case scenario, don’t see studying law or the legal profession as an attainable goal.

Going back to the idea of ‘for whom?, the best place to start is by considering who can access law schools. More specifically, who can, who can’t and who doesn’t attend law school, and what can and should we do to influence that? To answer this, consider these three key things:

• data (the context and makeup of our institutions, including statistics and narrative);
• allyship (to promote unheard or under-represented voices in spaces they are not yet in) and;
• culture (including the role we all play in shaping organisational and institutional culture).

Throughout my years of working with thousands of school pupils and college students, it might come as no surprise that I have heard countless remarks from them along the lines of, ‘I don’t belong here’, ‘This place isn’t for the likes of me’ and ‘People like me don’t go to places like this’. For those of us in law, or law adjacent, I argue that no matter your background, you can use your voice to lift up others. If there’s ever a reason to commit to amplifying your allyship, it’s for the students who have shared these words with me, and the countless others who felt it but didn’t say it.

This isn’t an issue that is just affecting our students. In the latest results of the Profile of the Profession survey when asked about equitable progression, 63% of respondents said that unconscious bias and traditional networks and routes to promotion exclude minority ethnic solicitors. As well as scrutinizing those routes to promotion, allyship through amplification is instrumental to ensuring everyone has equitable access to support, jobs and wider development opportunities.  

If under-represented and marginalised voices don’t consider themselves part of these spaces or don’t hear others encouraging them along the way, how can we continue to make strides in ensuring we have a profession that is for everyone? To push this work on we must be curious about people, take their stories into the spaces they might not yet be and advocate for them being there. Be intentional.

Finally, if I can leave you with the same advice I gave the attendees of the Association of Law Teachers Annual Conference 2025:

• Commit to listening and learning. We are all at different stages in our learning journey, so we must be patient with ourselves and each other.
• Commit to interrogating the role we as individuals have in shaping the cultures we work and live in.
• Whatever role you have in the legal profession, your work is about people. ‘What we do, what we say and how we treat each other really matters.’ (Speirs, 2024).

As John Amaechi (Psychologist, Consultant and former pro-basketball player) says, 'People make choices, and choices make culture.' We can choose to do better.