Driving diversity and inclusion across the profession

The Task Force comprises sixteen members from various minority, disability, LGBT+ and socio-economic backgrounds. The Task Force will make recommendations to encourage more female solicitors and solicitors from diverse backgrounds to seek leadership roles in the Law Society’s Council and Committees.

The Task Force will also create useful tools solicitors can use to help achieve equality, diversity and inclusion within their firms. The Law Society President Patrick Dorgan has made diversity and inclusion an important theme for his year in office.

• See the press release of 5 March 2019: Law Society of Ireland launches new Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Task Force

Promoting equality

Since 2016 the Law Society has run its Law and Women Mentoring Programme to help more women reach partner and managing partner level in the profession. To date 57 successful solicitor mentorship pairs have been created.

The Law Society’s well-established Access Programme supports access to legal education and careers for students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

For information on these programmes, and other initiatives, see the Society’s Diversity and CSR policies.