Linklaters has revealed its ethnicity pay gap alongside its latest gender pay gap data, ahead of the potential introduction of new mandatory reporting requirements for businesses.

The firm – which last year was the first of the magic circle to file its gender pay gap report – has released figures which show that across the whole firm, including equity partners, the firm has a 30.3% ethnicity pay gap on a mean basis, and a 0% gap on a median basis.

Eighty-three percent of the firm's UK workforce disclosed their ethnicity for the report, of who 21% are black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME).

The report also reveals details of the ethnicity pay gap broken down by pay quartiles. The gap is most pronounced among the top quartile of earners at 21.2%, while in the bottom quartile, the gap is 1% in favour of BAME employees.

The firm said the decision to report its ethnicity pay gap had been taken "in line with our strategy to increase the representation of BAME colleagues at all levels in the firm".

After the first year of mandatory gender pay gap reporting, the UK Government announced last year that it was considering introducing similar requirements for ethnicity data, launching a three-month consultation in October.

Responses to the consultation – which closed on 11 January – are currently being analysed as the government weighs up what disclosures should be made mandatory "to allow for meaningful action".

Last year, Allen & Overy also included ethnicity pay gap figures in its reporting, revealing a mean pay gap of 22.8% for BAME staff in 2017 and 21.6% for 2018.

For the first year of gender pay gap reporting, law firms were not required to include partners but following widespread calls for greater transparency, many have since opted to do so, including Linklaters, which voluntarily disclosed its partner pay gap at the end of March.

This year, the firmwide pay gap at Linklaters has narrowed from 44.2% to 37% on a median basis, although the mean average increased slightly from 60.3% to 61.1%.

The firm's top quartile of earners is less male than it was last year, with the proportion of women in the top quartile increasing from 37% to 41%.

Linklaters' pay gap excluding partners – which all law firms with more than 250 employees are required to report – has also improved on last year, with average hourly pay for men now 20.8% in favour of men, down from 23.2%, and the median average down from 39.1% to 33.9%.

Last year, a report by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee into the effectiveness of the first year of gender pay gap reporting described the exclusion of partners from the first round of reporting as making "a nonsense" of efforts to tackle the pay gap.

Law firms and other limited liability partnerships had not been required to include partner remuneration in their calculations as they are not technically employees, but clamour has since grown to make it compulsory for firms to include them in future.

Discussions over how to introduce a standardised approach to including partners have since taken place, with Clifford Chance and Pinsent Masons meeting with Law Society president Christina Blacklaws last year to look at how to encourage more transparency.

For more, see: