{"id":86395,"date":"2025-02-13T20:50:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/im-going-to-continue-using-my-voice-irwin-mitchells-alison-eddy-on-her-new-di-role\/"},"modified":"2025-02-13T20:50:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:50:46","slug":"im-going-to-continue-using-my-voice-irwin-mitchells-alison-eddy-on-her-new-di-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=86395","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m going to continue using my voice’ – Irwin Mitchell’s Alison Eddy on her new D&I role"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

After stepping down as London managing partner following more than 12 years in the role, Alison Eddy \u2013 who\u00a0won the Women in Law Lifetime Achievement Award at last year\u2019s\u00a0Legal 500 UK ESG Awards 2025<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 has taken up a new role as the firm\u2019s partner ambassador for inclusion.<\/p>\n

She sat down with\u00a0Legal Business\u00a0to talk about her career, D&I, how much progress has been made, and how much still needs to be done.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1995 I was approached by Irwin Mitchell to help set up their London office.<\/strong> I was already doing medical negligence work. I got into it because trade unions offered their members free legal advice, and increasingly enquiries were coming in about medical negligence. I handled that, one of the other partners that I joined with did all the employment work, and the third did personal injury work. It wasn\u2019t easy. I had five children aged between three and eleven, and there was no flexible working. Nobody talked about wellbeing, work life balance or diversity and inclusion. We went from the three of us in that office to now 450 people, with 60 partners.<\/p>\n

Twelve years ago I was appointed London managing partner.<\/strong> I was the first female managing partner at the firm. We\u2019ve got 23 offices nationally now, with ten regional lead partners looking after all those offices, and over 50% of those partners are women.<\/p>\n

\u2018I had five children aged between three and eleven, and there was no flexible working\u2019<\/p>\n

In 2008, I helped set up the diversity and inclusion board.<\/strong> Of course, everyone\u2019s got a D&I board now, but not many firms did back then. Some of us started saying we needed to be doing better at getting women into senior roles and attracting lawyers with diverse characteristics. Senior leaders bought into that. It\u2019s impossible to make change unless senior leaders are committed to it. And the firm remains committed today \u2013 all seven of the networking groups we set up are still going.<\/p>\n

We started out looking at the barriers for women.<\/strong> We looked at unconscious bias, lack of role models, all of that. One issue is in recruitment, obviously, and another is retention and promotion. What is it that prevents women from staying with the business as they move through their careers? One big issue is support for families, and we\u2019ve been very good on family friendly policies. We\u2019ve seen some really impressive results. 54% of our partners are women, 67% of our recent full equity promotions went to women, and we have one of the lowest gender pay gaps.<\/p>\n

\u2018I see a danger in having too many silos \u2013 it risks being more exclusive than inclusive\u2019<\/p>\n

This is really about gender balance though \u2013 it\u2019s no good having whole areas of the business that are all one gender.<\/strong> We have one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the legal sector, but the problem we have is that our admin roles, paralegals, apprentices, and PAs are predominantly women, and those are the lower-paid roles. We need to look at these roles and say, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t we attracting more men?<\/p>\n

People talk about intersectionality a lot more, and it\u2019s obviously a good thing.<\/strong> I see a danger in having too many silos. I know of some businesses that have a group for everything \u2013 where we have IM Respect, our group for race and faith, other firms might have separate groups for Muslims, Hindus or Jews. I understand why, but it risks being more exclusive than inclusive.<\/p>\n

People ask: \u201cWhy is diversity important?\u201d<\/strong> There\u2019s a social and business impact. It\u2019s clearly the right thing to do, but there are also lots of business reasons \u2013 you get more perspectives on what you\u2019re doing, you can better connect to a broad range of clients, and you\u2019re more open to ideas and innovation.<\/p>\n

If you have self-belief and work hard, you can succeed \u2013 you just need a bit of luck.<\/strong> Social mobility is one of the biggest issues for the legal sector. Schools and families need to enable children to have big dreams. Obviously not all kids are going to be suited to all careers, but an awful lot can happen with hard work, if you really want to do it. To that end, we do a lot of work with children and in schools, including with an organisation called Prime, to provide opportunities to those who may not otherwise have them. We also partner with the National Literacy Trust. Literacy is everything. Your life chances are incredibly enhanced if you have good literacy at a very early age.<\/p>\n

\u2018Why is diversity important? It\u2019s clearly the right thing to do but there are lots of business reasons too\u2019<\/p>\n

We as a profession have made an enormous amount of progress.<\/strong> Coming back to gender, for example: we celebrated the first 100 years of women in law in 2019. But actually, this progress didn\u2019t happen over 100 years \u2013 most of it was in the last 30 years, and an awful lot of it has been in the last ten years.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t sense any anti-D&I backlash at all.<\/strong> Nobody at UK law firms is questioning whether we should still have D&I boards or networking groups. Of course, there is this anti-woke thing going on in the wider culture. I really hate to see that. It\u2019s all become weaponized, when it should just be about increasing social justice, about more equality and more humanity.<\/p>\n

Although I have a new title, a lot of what I do hasn\u2019t changed.<\/strong> I\u2019ve always been out there talking about diversity, working within the firm and with other organisations to promote the cause. A senior person in the business having this role shows Irwin Mitchell\u2019s commitment to fostering an inclusive culture and sharing ideas on how to have a more equitable legal profession.<\/p>\n

The shortlist for the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2025 is out now<\/a> \u2013 all the details of this year\u2019s nominees, as well as how to attend, are available on the event website<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

alexander.ryan@legalbusiness.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After stepping down as London managing partner following more than 12 years in the role, Alison Eddy \u2013 who\u00a0won the Women in Law Lifetime Achievement Award at last year\u2019s\u00a0Legal 500 UK ESG Awards 2025\u00a0\u2013 has taken up a new role as the firm\u2019s partner ambassador for inclusion. She sat down with\u00a0Legal Business\u00a0to talk about her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[8097,11316,631,42426,42427,1644,5002],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-86395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-alison","tag-continue","tag-eddy","tag-irwin","tag-mitchells","tag-role","tag-voice"],"yoast_head":"\n'I'm going to continue using my voice' - Irwin Mitchell's Alison Eddy on her new D&I role - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=86395\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'I'm going to continue using my voice' - Irwin Mitchell's Alison Eddy on her new D&I role - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After stepping down as London managing partner following more than 12 years in the role, Alison Eddy \u2013 who\u00a0won the Women in Law Lifetime Achievement Award at last year\u2019s\u00a0Legal 500 UK ESG Awards 2025\u00a0\u2013 has taken up a new role as the firm\u2019s partner ambassador for inclusion. 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