SRA to conduct surprise diversity visits

The SRA will be making unannounced visits to 100 "randomly selected" law firms in order to assess their compliance with diversity reporting requirements, it was announced at the Law Society Firms Diversity Forum meeting in September. Declining to identify the firms, the SRA said the visits would improve the regulator's understanding of "how equality and diversity outcomes are being delivered in practice".

The visits follow a profession wide, two-stage survey of firms. The first stage required firms to reveal the number of people in their employ and has so far been completed by 7,131 firms out of some 11,000. The second stage asks employees questions about their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disabilities and caring responsibilities. The survey is a result of a statutory requirement created by the Legal Services Board in 2011, which requires that all firms and chambers publish information on the diversity of their employees. In line with this edict, the SRA will publish its data in 2013, after which firms will be required to release their own information.

The Law Society Gazette reports that the announcement was not well received by delegates at the meeting. The SRA's director of inclusion, Mehrunnisa Lalani, also admitted that there had been "some resistance" to the highly personal nature of the questions contained in stage two of the survey, but stressed that there is a "prefer not to say" option for each question.