Legal Partnerships Create Their Own Uphill Battle to Gender Balance

Law Firms Create Their Own Uphill Battle to Gender Balance

Writing in WomenLegal magazine, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first.com, explored why it is so many partnerships, and especially law firms, try so hard and yet fail so spectacularly at building gender balance within their offices.

Firms the world over start gender initiatives, but they make things harder for themselves — nigh impossible really — for two reasons:

The structure of these firms is based on 24/7 work by underlings whose compensation if they ever make it to partnership is based on others doing exactly what they did. Guess who makes partner, and guess who decides to pursue other opportunities instead?
The programmes focus on “fixing the women,” which results in further masculinising the firms by training some women to adopt alpha male attitudes like their male colleagues. The others either are stymied or move along.

The result: gender balance among partners averages around 85/15 men to women, with global law firms toward the bottom. Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Allen & Overy each have a 15% female partnership; Slaughter & May has 19%; and, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer 12%. Even though women have been the majority of law school graduates for many years.

Instead, Wittenberg-Cox explains, firms should be asking themselves:
— Do you really want to encourage half your work force to spend time learning and adopting the communication styles preferred by men, squandering much of the added value they bring as women?
— Are you promoting to partner the lawyers that your clients and peers evaluate as top performers or those that today’s partners prefer for their availability and expressed ambition?

It is time to think about new approaches, and breaking away from the traditional 20th century pyramid leadership structure. Adopting a flexible, human form of management that celebrates gender balance and fosters innovation and creativity is the way to go.

[I]t can happen and it is happening.” Wittenberg-Cox concludes in the article. “The future will prove the competitive edge gained by the innovators. Those who want to be ready may want to stop ‘fixing the women’. And reframe gender balance as key strategic lever to their firms ability to adapt to 21st century talent and market realities.”