We welcome contributions to this series: if you have an opinion or story you’d like to share, please do feel free to get in touch with The Lawyer.
There is a rather big word that our friends in the Diversity & Inclusivity (D&I) teams have in their lexicon which is “intersectionality”. I am not sure anyone really understands what it means. Is it about gender, sexuality, race, religion, social class and/or disabilities? It is supposed to acknowledge all the differences between us which […]
On 25 June last year, the unthinkable happened. Tragedy struck in what should have been a weekend of celebration. Two people were shot and killed at the heart of the Oslo Pride celebrations. Some of my colleagues were moving in London pub circles, some of them know people who were directly affected, and some of […]
How many times have you heard a member of the LGBTQIA+ community share that they have hidden part of their personal lives during their career? Yet, even once they have come out of the closet, it feels as if the door slams shut again with each new job, position, colleague… At the start of my […]
Yesterday, I dared to struggle… When I was 14, I started to question my sexuality and actively explore what this meant. At the time, I attended a middle class, conservative school where the majority of the teachers and pupils looked and spoke the same. I had no visible LGBTQ+ role models, or anyone I could […]
Why is Pride month important? Its value is not so much about celebration in my view, but creating a point in time to remind everyone why we are discussing these issues. The truth is that, whatever we might think from the comfort of Western Europe, freedom to identify openly in the workplace as LGBTQ+ is […]
Greetings from Japan, the only G7 country without any country-wide protections for LGBTQIA+ rights or recognition of LGBTQIA+ relationships. Many visitors to Japan often find this fact to be a surprising contrast to Japan’s progressive and technologically advanced image. Unfortunately, the journey towards equality in Japan is stuck on the slow local train, instead of […]
The invitation to share some reflections on Pride Month has caused me to reflect more deeply on my relationship to “pride” in a work environment than I have done, consciously at least, before. The centring of “pride” by the Gay Liberation Front in the UK and US, and other gay liberation groups across the world, […]
My journey to being out at work has taken in several different firms and spanned literally thousands of miles but has underlined, at least for me, that institutional support is key for LGBTQ+ people to be openly out and to thrive in the workplace. I started my career in Perth, Australia fresh out of university […]
This a self-indulgent piece written by an entitled middle-class university educated white male. I know that could be the initial thought for some reading this. We are all quick to make snap judgments and I have to remind myself of this. I want to crack the veneer of that appearance and look a little deeper […]
Thirty-six years and counting in Big Law – and so much has changed. When I look back at where we have come from, I do so with a mixture of joy and horror, not to mention a great deal of incredible respect and reverence for those who came before me. I feel joy from the […]
In 2016, I was a mid-level associate at Clifford Chance. I was deep into my life at the firm, working on complex energy and infrastructure transactions predominantly in Latin America. My ability to speak English and Spanish with native fluency was critical to my ability to work in two cultures and draft and negotiate sophisticated […]
During Pride month, you will often hear a lot of people talking about ‘coming out’ multiple times – to parents, friends, colleagues, and clients. While all of that is true and each can be met with challenges, conversation or celebration, or a combination of the three, coming out as ‘gay’ for the first time to […]