Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner dramatically hiked the amount of bonuses it paid out last year, handing payments to 83% of its male and 83% of its female employees, compared to about 21% and 17% respectively in 2018, according to its gender pay gap report.

The firm stated in its report that it added a "stub year" bonus payment in 2019 to "harmonise bonus payment dates across our newly combined firm", and awarded all legacy Berwin Leighton Paisner employees a payment following the firm's merger with Bryan Cave and the sale of its stake in LOD.

It added that those hired during the 2019 reporting period were not eligible for the one-off award, and that is "a key contributing factor in the difference between the percentage of Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic (BAME) and white colleagues receiving a bonus."

The firm reported its BAME pay gap for the first time this year, and revealed that 67% of its BAME employees received a bonus in 2019 compared to over 85% of white counterparts.

BCLP's U.K. mean employee gender pay gap, which combines pay and bonuses for all employees, fell by 5% to 28% in 2019, according to the report. Including partners, its workforce gender pay gap remained flat in 2019 at 55%.

The firm voluntarily disclosed its ethnicity pay gap for all employees, which doubled to reach 26%. However, its ethnicity bonus pay gap for employees rose from 26% to 32% in 2019.

But stripped out partnership figures reveal that BAME partners at the firm – who make up just 9.5% of the total group – earned on average 21% more than their white counterparts.

On Wednesday, the U.K. government announced the suspension of the deadline for gender pay gap reporting due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak, leaving firms free to abstain from publishing their gender pay gaps figures this year.

A spokesperson for BCLP said: "Whilst the UK government has announced that it has suspended enforcement of the Gender Pay Gap deadlines for this reporting year, transparency is extremely important to us here at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. Putting this annual report together provides a valuable opportunity to reflect on our progress and we believe it is important for us, and beneficial to the wider industry, to share our results.

"Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner has a strong commitment to continuing to make strides to close our gender pay gap. Our mean pay gap has decreased over the past 12 months and the proportion of women in the upper and upper mid pay quartiles has increased.  We do however acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to be done."

Earlier in March, Irwin Mitchell's report showed the firm had narrowed its pay gap, while in December, Linklaters' figures showed that both its gender and ethnicity pay gaps had widened.

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