Legal Services Board plans to compel law firms to publish data about the diversity of their staff will act as a ‘powerful incentive’ for firms to increase social mobility in the profession, LSB chief executive Chris Kenny has said in a letter to legal regulators.

Kenny said that driving ‘action on increasing diversity and social mobility in the legal workforce’ is a ‘major priority’ in the LSB’s work.

He said the board is currently developing guidance that will set out its expectation that frontline regulators such as the Law Society and Bar Council ‘should require firms/chambers to gather and publish data about the diversity of their workforce as a regulatory obligation’.

Kenny said: ‘We believe that transparency about diversity at a firm or chambers level will act as a powerful incentive to take action. By putting the onus on the entity to collect and publish data, we will make the entity accountable for what they decide and deliver.

‘It is the firm or chambers that recruits the workforce, establishes the culture, trains and promotes employees and allocates work; it is therefore the firm or chambers that is best placed to drive change.’

The LSB will publish a consultation in November on the guidance it will be issuing to regulators.

Kenny said the LSB has also committed to ‘undertake further work with the relevant interest groups’ in relation to the research it is undertaking to assess the impact of alternative business structures on ethnic minority lawyers. He said the LSB would ensure that its impact assessment of the reforms took account of concerns that ethnic minority lawyers are disproportionately represented in small firms.

Kenny said the research would identify any ‘additional steps’ that could be taken to mitigate the impact on ethnic minority firms, such as support from professional bodies.