Linklaters is aiming to tackle a gender imbalance in tech and innovation roles with the establishment of a global working group to encourage more women to apply for such positions.

Thirty employees have so far signed up to the Women in Tech working group, which will be led by technology projects head Simon Hughes, new chief technology officer (CTO) Bruna Pellicci (pictured above) and Wayne Niles, global head of end user and applications at the firm.

The group will aim to make the firm's recruitment and retention practices more inclusive, including ensuring that language in tech job descriptions is attractive to both men and women.

At the same time, the firm has become the first of the magic circle to sign up to the government-backed Tech Talent Charter (TTC), which aims to improve diversity among the UK's tech workforce. According to the TTC, just 17% of tech or IT workers in the UK are female.

Pellicci – who joined from Ashurst last month – said: "Technology in law is an exciting and important space to work, and greater diversity in this function will drive innovation and performance. It is promising to see work on diversity across our technology teams already in motion at Linklaters, and that diversity and inclusion is so embedded in the strategy here."

The firm already has a number of women in senior tech and innovation roles at the firm, including Pellicci, innovation head Shilpa Bhandarkar and legaltech head Jas Mundae.

Hughes (pictured below) told Legal Week that the current gender split of Linklaters' tech team is "not dissimilar" to the typical composition of any tech workforce, but that other successful diversity initiatives within the firm had prompted a recognition that "there was more we could do as a department".

As a signatory of the TTC, Linklaters will be required to support attraction, recruitment and retention practices that are designed to increase the diversity of its workforce, and to define a timetable for change. The firm will also have to measure the diversity of its tech team, and share data with the TTC.

Hughes said he hopes that within six months, the tech team would be recognised internally as "a diverse and inclusive place to work". "In the longer run, I hope we become recognised externally as 'best in class' in a tech function," he added.

The gender balance of legal teams, not just in tech, has been an increasingly important issue across the legal sector. At the LegalWeek CONNECT conference last week, senior in-house lawyers discussed withholding work from law firms that fail to improve diversity in their legal teams, and the Law Society has recently pushed for all law firms to publish their gender pay gap statistics.