In 2023, the Catalyst report “Women’s Workplace Experiences Challenges Antiracist Leaders to Step Up” surveyed 2,734 women from marginalised racial and ethnic groups worldwide, including 604 women from the UK. It revealed that 51% of women from marginalised backgrounds experience racism at work, with those of darker skin tones more affected. Notably, 49% of respondents felt senior […]
Growing up in one of the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods, the odds were stacked against me from the start. My journey to becoming a trainee solicitor at CMS has been anything but straightforward. As someone who is Black, dyslexic, and raised in an area within the top 10 per cent of the most deprived neighbourhoods […]
Entering the legal profession as a Black male had its challenges. I took the plunge and moved from my hometown to Manchester to study law at university in 2014. Initially, there were perceived barriers to my entry. People around me, who I respect, whether that be family or friends, told me that the industry “wasn’t […]
Baby loss is frighteningly common. According to the latest statistics available from Tommy’s, an estimated one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. However, if you are a black woman, the statistics are far worse. In 2021, The Lancet, working with Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research, published a paper showing that black women had a […]
Where are you from? Anybody who has ever watched the TV genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? will be aware that this is not always as straightforward a question to answer as it might first seem. And anyone who has ever worked in a law firm will know that it is not always […]
Born and raised in western Nigeria, I have always been fascinated by rock formations and geology. I spent the summer holiday before the start of my senior secondary school year absorbed in a geography textbook authored by Goh Cheng Leong, earning to uncover more about the earth, mountains, volcanoes, and other natural phenomenon. However, I […]
It was Blair Underwood’s character Jonathan Rollins in LA Law who first inspired me to become a lawyer, cliched as this sounds. As a child aged 7, I had never seen a black man in a professional role before, and I was in awe – representation really does matter. My initial steps into the legal […]
Born into a Sudanese family, my parents made a significant decision that would shape my experiences as a Black woman in ways I could never have anticipated. They chose to move our family to a small town in Oxfordshire, far away from their Sudanese community. This decision, coupled with my education at a Catholic primary […]
As part of Black History Month, The Lawyer spoke to four Allen & Overy lawyers, from trainee to partner, about their experiences in the law.
Growing up between London and Lagos, Claudius Sokenu started out in the US government legal department before later becoming the first Black male partner at American outfit Shearman & Sterling. It was after becoming a partner that he took his career in a new direction by moving in-house. “I always knew that I didn’t think […]
October is Black History Month. We are given 31 days to reflect on the enormous contribution Black people have made to the history of this country; to re-examine diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; and to press the reset button if we feel that our existing ways of operating are no longer working. But, when […]
Mariam Akanbi is general counsel at investment advisory firm ARCH Emerging Markets Partners, based in London. She studied law and sociology at Warwick University, partly because she wasn’t entirely sure that law was the career for her. It was while she was at university that she discovered corporate law, and found out about the path […]