Law Society of Scotland: Equality Impact Assessment Training

The Law Society of Scotland promotes the interests of the solicitors' profession in Scotland and the interests of the public in relation to the profession. All practising solicitors in Scotland must be members of the Society and must hold a current Practising Certificate which is issued by the Society. The Society provides Continuing Professional Development to the profession, accredits legal education and training for those wishing to become solicitors, deals with certain types of complaints against solicitors, contributes to law reform and development and provides members of the Society with advice and guidance in relation to the Solicitors’ Practice Rules.

Equality Works was commissioned by the Society in autumn 2008 to provide a programme of equality training and consultancy on Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA). Although the Society was not subject to the public duties on equality placed on other public bodies, senior managers had taken the extremely positive step of working as though the public duties did apply.

They developed an equality strategy and race, gender and disability schemes. They also undertook an initial round of impact assessments as part of the development of these strategies between 2005 and 2008. In developing the new three year strategy from 2009 to 2011, the Society invited us to provide training and coaching to support senior managers in carrying out new impact assessments on all the Society’s functions.

We developed and delivered a tailor-made training session, which allowed participants to refresh their understanding of equality impact assessment and to consider key data and research which they might use as part of assessments – including research into the experiences of disabled people, women, lesbians, gay men and bisexual people in the legal profession, as well as consultation undertaken by the Society with Young Lawyers. We also provided pre-course reading to ensure that participants were able to use the session to focus on the practical aspects of assessment.

Following on from the training, we provided one to one coaching with participants to support the development of the EqIAs. This included reviewing initial drafts of assessments and relevant parts of the Society’s Equality & Diversity Strategy to identify good practice and areas for development for each department. We worked with the Society on a range of assessments including the implementation of the new legal complaints procedure, the review of the education and training strategy for the profession and the Society’s approach to Procurement. Suggested actions resulting from the assessments include equalities monitoring of customer satisfaction with complaints, inclusion of equality issues in media training and the development of specific equality criteria relating to each tendering process.

Feedback from participants was very positive. For example, one participant sent this feedback to the Head of Strategic Change following our session:

“Just had a super session with [the consultant] who has given me loads of ideas of things … which should be included in the assessments. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and educative discussion. Thanks for arranging it."

The Law Society of Scotland will complete the assessments and these will form part of the new Equality and Diversity Strategy.

On the strength of this work, we were commissioned to undertake some involvement and consultation work for the Society to underpin the new strategy and the Society has also commissioned us to produce guidance on equality issues for the profession, to be published in late 2008.