Ropes & Gray leads the way: #1 in UK law firm gender diversity survey

Law.com’s latest UK gender diversity survey has found that Ropes & Gray has the most gender diverse equity partnership in the UK, with women making up 40% of equity partners in our London office. This is the fourth year in a row that Ropes & Gray has ranked in the annual survey's top three for the highest proportion of female equity partners in the UK.

While there is always more work to do, we are proud of our accomplishments in gender diversity. Gender parity at every level, from trainee solicitors to partnership, has always been important to us and something we have excelled in.

We are committed to developing all of our talent. However, we have targeted initiatives to attract, develop, retain, and progress our female lawyers through to partnership. Examples include our long-standing global Women’s Forum, which offers key mentoring, training, and networking opportunities.

We also have generous parental leave benefits and a dedicated parental leave programme designed to provide support, guidance and tools to assist individuals in preparing for leave, throughout their time away, and during their reintegration. Both the parental benefits and programme are intended to ensure we do not lose any of our female talent following parental leave.

We can see our retention and development efforts are paying off when we look at our internal counsel and partnership promotions in London. Since 2019, 73% of these promotions have been female and when looking at two of our core transaction groups – private equity and asset management – 100% of promotions have been female.

Our private equity and asset management female partnership is now 63% and 75% respectively. To our knowledge, this level of gender diversity in a law firm’s PE and asset management teams is unique in the City.

Importantly, our focus on gender diversity is not restricted to London. Globally, we have a 33% female equity partnership – the highest gender diversity of any global elite law firm – with many women serving in leadership roles. As well as Julie Jones, chair of the firm, women also serve as members of our global policy committee, as practice group leaders, and as office managing partners in six of our global offices.