Gbemi Akanbi crowned ‘DE&I Champion of the Year – Legal Services Professional’ at Women & Diversity in Law Awards 2025
Blake Morgan Legal Support Assistant, Gbemi Akanbi, won the ‘DE&I Champion of the Year – Legal Services Professional’ at the Women & Diversity in Law Awards 2025.
The Women & Diversity in Law Awards, which took place in London on 18 March, honoured outstanding women leaders and practitioners as well as the legal teams and businesses working to make the UK profession more closely reflect the society in which it operates. The awards were hosted by The Global Legal Post, which assembled a panel of 30 judges from across the profession to choose the winning and highly commended entries
Gbemi who is the founder and director of BlackWomenAspiringLawyers was recognised for her efforts to create equitable legal career opportunities for minorities, particularly young black women. BlackWomenAspiringLawyers is a not-for-profit network for aspiring legal professionals of Black/Black Mixed heritage who identify as Women to share their experiences, encouraging them to make change, share their tips and tricks, receive completely free resources, receive and offer guidance and find ways to build their personal brands. One of their key drivers is Allyship, the support they have received from their Allies has been essential to their work.
Gbemi started the network in 2020 during her time at Keele University for a plethora of reasons, the main one being bridging the employment gap. Commenting on this, Gbemi said:
Getting the job is the real challenge but then it doesn’t end there as there are issues of pay disparities, lack of advancement, retention challenges etc, the second being the lack of representation in the legal field – 3% of lawyers are Black and roughly 0.6% are Black women, the third being wanting to create a space safe for these women to continue build their network or find out ways to build network and the fourth being I have always wanted to help people and enact change and the best way to start is identifying a cause you are invested in and then finding out how to make your niche reach your target audience.
In light of this, Gbemi shared her career journey and work at Blake Morgan so far;
“I graduated in 2023 from Keele University with a degree in Law with Competency in French. Prior to that , I had been trying to make sure law was for me so I would apply to various open days, insight days and undertook internships at Mishcon De Reya (Real Estate), Gateley(Residential Development) and BDO (Audit) – where I met Tara Anderson at BDO (who worked in-house and has since joined Blake Morgan a few months ago) and she was the final push that I needed to convince myself that Law was for me and I was going into it one way or another. She opened my eyes to unconventional routes into law that I would have never known about or considered.
“After graduation, I worked in-house of an asset manager as a European Private Credit/Debt Paralegal Intern for Pemberton Asset Management with a focus in Transactions and Real Assets – CRE & Private Credit CLOs then worked as an Cross-Border/International Travel Claims Paralegal at Clyde&Co, then entered into a temporary contract at King Street Capital Management as a US & European Restructuring, Refinancing and Private Credit/Debt Paralegal.
“I also volunteered/interned in Nigeria in a law firm prior to joining Blake Morgan. The day before I was meant to catch my flight out, Rob Brown gave me a call to come in for an interview and on the day of my flight I had an interview with Prashant Dave. Three days after I returned to London, I was walking through the doors of Blake Morgan to join the Property team. I do feel like working at Blake Morgan (although very early in my career) there have been a lot of full circle moments – from my mentor who started her career a few floors up in this building to now having her work across the square to emailing/having my paths cross with people I worked with previously who were essential to my development. I have had a high level of exposure so far- being encouraged to try, decide and question is a privilege and is essential to learning and development.
To also have a very supportive, patient, and personable team (especially my manager Prashant Dave) has honestly made me enjoy my work so far. Because of my team, I am able to learn more about Blake Morgan, partake in meaningful work, make change in various ways, meet some of the most interesting individuals known to man and take the steps to become a truly successful solicitor. Even outside of my team, the drive and willingness I see around the firm is everything!
Tags: EDI
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