The Law Society Group has published its gender pay gap report for 2021.
The report includes the combined results of the Law Society of England and Wales and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), which operates independently.
The report shows that the 2021 median pay gap between men and women is 11.3%, lower than the current UK median pay gap of 15.4% as published by the Office of National Statistics 2021, meaning that the group pay gap between women and men is 11.5%.
The 2021 group median bonus gap is -3.4% – with a mean bonus gap of 23.2%.
A Law Society Group spokesperson said:
“As a group, the slight decrease in the median pay gap from last year is predominantly caused by a shift in percentage between male and female in both the lower middle and lower quartiles.
There are various bonus schemes operating throughout the Law Society Group. For the first year since we started reporting, the median bonus gap is inverse, with the proportion of females receiving a bonus exceeding the proportion of males.
Around 61% of our workforce is female, with women continuing to be well represented across all pay quartiles.
There is, however, still work to be done to ensure the gender balance in the upper middle and top quartiles better reflects the gender split in the rest of the group.”
As of April 2022, the Law Society and SRA will be reporting on their gender pay gap as two separate entities.
