Laura Hodgson, Knowledge Director in London, talks about the benefits and challenges of being out at work and the evolution of the Pride network and an LGBTQI+ inclusive culture at Norton Rose Fulbright.

When Laura joined Norton Rose Fulbright 18 years ago as a paralegal she took the decision early on in her career that it was safer to be openly out.

“If everybody knows that you are gay then you don’t find yourself in a situation where people can say things that make you feel uncomfortable,” says Laura. “I avoid hearing those things because I’m well known in the firm and I’ve been open for a long time. That makes life easier.”

Having started her career at another law firm that, 20 years ago, was home to very few women and held its Christmas parties in strip clubs, she says the Norton Rose culture was immediately more inclusive. “Back then, Norton Rose wasn’t exactly as open and diverse as it is now, but it was a different culture that was not as uncomfortable,” she says. “Over the years, people’s differences have become part of the fabric of the culture.”

While coming out professionally was never a standout moment, the same was not true in Laura’s personal life. Growing up with parents that worked in the media, she was a child of liberals who had been involved in the civil rights movement in the Sixties.

Still, she says: “When I came out to my parents at 18 they were extremely unpleasant about it, which I found quite difficult and which was uncomfortable for several years. I actually found coming out in a professional context easier, because there was less emotional baggage associated with it.”

Laura has seen how coming out to colleagues is harder for some people than others. “If you’re married it’s not so difficult,” she says. “People ask if you have a husband, and you simply tell them you have a wife. If you’re single that is harder – whether you are heterosexual or gay – because people are more quizzical about your private life. I have been in a relationship for a long time and people know my wife.”

Laura was one of the founders of the firm’s Pride network when it started in London 11 years ago, having met up with a number of colleagues at events organised by others in the City to talk about LGBTQI+ inclusion and seen an opportunity to bring those conversations back into the firm.

“It started by asking favours of partners really – asking if we could do it,” she says. “There was some pushback from people saying that we didn’t really need a network because our culture was already quite positive, but it was never about stamping out bad behaviour, just engaging with others, including clients, through new social networks.”

The Pride network has grown from “a small group of slight outsiders” into a powerful group where everyone is welcome, running events that involve as many people as possible, representing “a key element of how the firm projects itself to the outside world”, says Laura. It is important that the network has always included a balance of men and women, with a focus on having fun, she says.

Laura’s advice to younger members of the LGBTQI+ community is to lean in and be themselves. She says: “I know it sounds hackneyed, and we talk a lot about being authentic, but I really believe it. You can tell when someone is masking themselves and in some way adapting to others, and it’s a mistake.”

She says she has never experienced microaggressions but has, like most people, observed things that have made her feel uncomfortable – such as misguided office banter or dumb comments – where the person making her feel that way was likely completely unaware of what they had done.

“It is important for people to learn to call that out, either on behalf of themselves or others, when those things are happening,” says Laura. “It is too easy to be quiet when we should be intervening to challenge poor behaviour. The issues stand out as red flags now, but challenging them doesn’t get easier; humans are never comfortable challenging their peers.”

She’d like colleagues to do that more often. “I’d also like to see more people that run firms engaging with their employee networks on a day-to-day basis,” says Laura. “After two years of lockdown, it is so important to focus on human networks like Pride again, in the spirit of reconnecting and rebuilding that sense of collegiality.”

She concludes: “I can get access to people through those groups that might not come to the office very much, and might not have friends in their department. Through Pride you are able to play a rewarding role in bringing those individuals into discussions and events that make them feel at home. I’m quite proud of what we have been able to create.”