“Diversity in a City partnership: men in dark grey suits and in light grey suits” The “City” is London and thanks once again to the rollonfriday for yet another interesting post Clients force firms to take diversity seriously… Barclays, the mega UK based bank, has requested diversity stats from prominent City firms including: “Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, DLA, Freshfields, Linklaters, Lovells and Simmons & Simmons. And the bank confirmed that it would soon be requiring this information from every firm it instructs.” Please note that this list includes the largest and second largest law firm in the world. FastForward: Creating diversity quickly is no small challenge. Just ask our law firm clients in South Africa where “Black Empowerment” legislation requires almost immediate diversity. Solutions to rapidly acquiring diversity will in many cases require innovative approaches. I have posted before on creative solutions (see Ingenious Alliance to Create and Market Diversity) and rollonfriday makes reference today to London firm Berwin Leighton Paisner’s non-linear approach in …as BLP introduces alternative to partnership . Regardless of approach, any law firm that ignores diversity is doing so at its peril and will pay a price much sooner than many may have anticipated. The diversity movement is accelerating.