Gender pay gap 21% at Law Society of Scotland

A gender pay gap of 21% in favour of men has been reported by the Law Society of Scotland.

The Society, which chose to release its figures despite coming below the 250 employee figure at which reporting is legally required, is 71% female in its staff of 127, but men make up 46% of the top quartile, at 15 out of 32 employees. The mean pay gap is 17% in favour of men.

Just over half, at 54%, of female staff at the Society have roles within the lower and lower middle quartiles, whereas 37% of male staff work in those quartiles.

Chief executive Lorna Jack commented: "We are committed to championing gender equality. While we have fewer than 250 employees and are not legally required to report, we are choosing to publish our gender pay gap because we recognise that achieving gender equality in the workplace is important. Working towards gender equality in the workplace is everyone’s responsibility and should not be viewed as an issue that only concerns women – we all benefit.

"As a smaller organisation, even limited changes in personnel could result in substantial fluctuations but we intend to work towards reducing our gender pay gap. We have committed to undertaking unconscious bias training for all our managers this year and are examining how we can use our well-received mentoring programme for solicitors to benefit our staff team at the Law Society.

"We will continue to be agile in our approach to career paths within the organisation and ensure we promote flexible working to all staff, which can be taken up by those who have caring responsibilities or want to pursue other interests and opportunities outside work. When we recruit new members of staff we will measure the gender breakdown of applications at each stage of the recruitment process."

The Society also publishes guidance on equality and diversity for the legal profession, which sets out 10 voluntary equality standards for law firms, including developing an equality strategy, providing staff training on equality, and for firms with more than 150 employees, publication of the gender pay gap. Ms Jack said it made sense for the Society to do the same.

This year the Society will undertake a profession-wide equality and diversity census.