National firm Irwin Mitchell has reported a shrinking gender pay gap, albeit female staff are still paid 10.3% less than male staff, on average.

According to the firm’s annual report, the mean gender pay gap has fallen from 12.8% last year to 10.3% in 2020. The firm’s gender bonus gap also narrowed from 31.9% in 2018 to 25.7% in 2019. Last year’s average pay gap across the top 50 UK law firms was 19.5%.

Some 70% of Irwin Mitchell staff are female, and women make up 65% of regional managing partners and 42% of partners. In 2020, 63% of promotions to associate and senior associate at the firm went to women and, in 2019, 77% of colleagues promoted to partner level were women.

Susana Berlevy, chief people officer and diversity board member, said: ‘Although our results are again positive, and show an overall improvement from last year, we recognise that there’s still work to do and remain committed to improvement. Part of this includes the hard work taking place to ensure our people policies are developed to support the improvement in gender balance across the organisation.

‘We have an ambition to be a leading responsible business, and we demonstrate that by championing fairness, diversity, equality and inclusion.’

Late last year, magic circle firms Linklaters and Allen and Overy announced overall gender pay gaps of 62.6% and 61.5% respectively. Meanwhile, international firm White & Case revealed that its combined gender pay gap for partners and employees shrunk from 64.8% in 2018 to 62.2%.