Finalists: Dentons; Pinsent Masons (highly commended); Womble Bond Dickinson.

A programme to boost the pipeline of future female partners helped Bird & Bird attain the diversity innovation award.

Despite having achieved gender equality at associate level, the firm's male partners still outnumbered female partners by three to one. To try and remedy that stat, the firm set out to design and launch a global diversity and coaching programme in the second half of 2016 with a number of key aims: to retain high-performing female lawyers and therefore increase the talent pool of potential partners; to develop a firm-wide network of women to help tackle the barriers to progression; and create role models to show other women what is possible (with the bonus of demonstrating to clients that the firm is actively promoting diversity).

The programme has already scored measurable success: three participants have been promoted to partner and the 2017 programme was oversubscribed.

"The programme definitely helped me on the path to partnership. It was so refreshing to take time away from the day job to evaluate where I was in my career and share perspectives across the group on the challenges and opportunities that we were all facing in our different countries," said Bryony Hurst, one of the firm's first graduates from the programme.

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