A UK-based law firm with thousands of lawyers globally has been working with Pirical for several years, mostly focusing on gender equality. The Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the firm was looking to use Pirical’s HR data analytics to strengthen its wider diversity strategy too.

The DEI team has a wide range of responsibilities, including shaping and implementing new policies. A big part of their work is getting the backing of senior figures, as well as securing engagement more broadly. As one of the team states, “We try to get everybody engaged at a ground level, we’re always working hard to create a culture of inclusion.”

The challenge: Making an ambitious strategy a reality

The firm has six major legal practice groups, covering areas like finance, real estate, technology and much more. The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team was tasked with setting DEI targets for each of these groups, including the percentage of ethnic minority individuals at partner level.

The team lead was keen to take a 'bottom-up' approach rather than a blanket one, by tailoring targets to each practice group and its individual circumstances, to make them fairer and more motivating. “It was evident to us that flat targets wouldn’t work, because they were too generic," they said. "It wouldn’t encourage responsibility.”

The biggest challenge was figuring out where to start. For organizations of all sizes, it’s hard to decide what’s realistic, how ambitious to be and how far out to plan. What’s more, making a clear and compelling pitch to internal stakeholders can be just as tricky. “All that data can be overwhelming, I wanted to know what it was really telling me.”

“The last thing we wanted to do was to have targets where nothing changes.” For practice groups that were already doing well, they wanted to challenge them to do better. And for other parts of the firm that have more to do when it comes to diversity, it was important to make sure they weren’t disheartened by unrealistic, blanket targets. “We needed to have a more granular approach.” 

The solution: Accessible information that inspires action 

Pirical helped this client deliver the bottom-up targets setting process, beginning by analyzing gender and ethnicity data for each practice group. With the help of Pirical On Demand the firm was able to carry out quick and simple modeling, run analyses repeatedly and explore different cuts of data.

After this, they used Pirical’s tools to assess each practice group, which involved looking at how diversity had evolved over time. Pirical allowed the firm to compare each practice group’s performance, both internally and against competitors. Next, they used Pirical’s tools to build models for each practice group – around recruitment, attrition and promotion – which forecast what would happen around these three areas if they continued at the same rate. 

The firm and Pirical then presented these findings to each practice group, in an accessible and engaging way, with projections around what would happen if no action was taken. “It was all super informative and non-judgemental,” the Head of DEI said. “Being able to see how each practice group compared against each other helped tease out a level of competitiveness too.” 

Finally, the firm used Pirical to aggregate each practice group’s targets into a firm-wide target, rooted in that granular analysis and shared equally across the company. “The whole process enabled more meaningful conversations. Instead of scratching our heads, figuring out what to do, there was a sense of excitement. We were ready to crack on.”