Pinsent Masons has acquired a diversity and inclusion consulting company.

The firm has bought Brook Graham for an undisclosed fee.

It is the latest in a series of acquisitions by Pinsent Masons. In March it took a minority stake in ‘New Law’ start-up business Yuzu, while in 2015 it bought a majority stake in cloud-based compliance venture Cerico.

Pinsent Masons senior partner Richard Foley said: “We take a holistic view of the challenges that our clients face and have a successful track record of investing in businesses that have the potential to help our clients overcome these. Brook Graham is scalable business with a strong reputation and an impressive client base to match.

“D&I is high on the agenda for organisations and combined with our own international network, legal expertise and dedication to D&I, I’m confident that clients will reap the benefits of this valuable combined offering.”

The partner spearheading the Brook Graham acquisition was Linda Jones, who also led the firm’s ‘Project Sky’ diversity initiative which resulted in Pinsents passing its goal of having a 25 per cent female partnership a year ahead of schedule.

Speaking to The Lawyer, Jones said: “Five years ago I was going out to clients asking about what they were doing about diversity; in the last two or three years it has felt like the tables have turned and I have had clients approaching me to say, ‘We’ve heard about what you’re doing – can you come to talk to us?'”

“Having had numerous conversation like that, I though that perhaps that was a service we could offer to clients. We recruited our first diversity and inclusion consultant, Kate Dodd, and then the opportunity to work work with Brook Graham came up.

“We had been working with them since 2012 on initiatives to do with Project Sky. They were looking to move their business on to a bigger platform, and it gave us the opportunity to turbocharge the diversity initiatives we have started.

“We are trying to innovate and offer clients a more holistic range of services: this is the latest step in that diversification.”