Baker McKenzie offices in Washington, D.C.

Baker McKenzie has announced a series of gender diversity targets that it hopes to reach globally in the coming years.

The firm has set itself a target of a 40:40:20 gender diversity split, to represent 40% women, 40% men and 20% flexible, which the firm says can include women, men and non-binary persons, by July 2025. The numbers apply to partners, senior business professionals and firm committee leadership.

In offices that do not yet have at least 25% female partners, the firm has set targets of at least one out of four partner promotions being women from July 2020.

Alongside this, the firm also announced that all candidate pools for external recruitment for partners or senior business professionals should already meet these new targets.

The firm described the numbers as “global aspirational targets”. Jaime Trujillo, acting global chair at the firm, said: “We are already making great progress in many areas toward this critical goal. We have more female partners than any other law firm and for the last three years our promotions to partner have been on average 40% women.”

In London, 29% of the firm's partnership is currently female.

This is the second diversity target set by Baker McKenzie so far this year. In March, the firm announced plans to boost the number of black, Asian and minority ethnic employees across its London office to 14%, but it did not specify a target date.

In its latest gender pay gap report this year, Baker McKenzie's total partnership currently has a mean gender pay gap of 14%, while its median gap is 30%. However, female partners received 26% more in bonuses in 2018. Across all levels of employees at the office however, the mean gender pay gap stands at 51% in favour of men.