Women in the Law - Building Gender Balanced Business

The state of gender balance, or rather continued imbalance, in the legal professions was one of the themes at this year’s Women of the World Festival and Conference, held at London’s Royal Festival Hall 11-13 March. The familiar issues were aired – is the continued imbalance of women in senior positions simply a pipeline problem, or is it structural (in truth little argument there)? Is the issue one of inadequate job flexibility, or are there deeper issues about how male partners continue to appoint ‘in their own image’?

The key statistics are well known by now: over 50% of law graduates and over 50% of entrants to the bar are women, with close to this having been the case for many years. So the idea that it’s merely a time-lag problem can be quickly dismissed. Yet it remains the case that only 15% of partners in law firms are women and improvement remains patchy. And there is a far higher attrition rate for women than for men around 10 years into their career, with few concessions to work-life balance to encourage them to stay or return after a child-break. The Bar Council’s exit surveys, for those leaving the Bar after around 6 years, show clearly that lack of flexibility in working practices is a major factor for women; there’s an automatic assumption that once a woman seeks flexible working arrangements in order to start a family, she is consciously removing herself from the career path to partner. Work flexibility needs to be recognised as fundamental to the achievement of gender balance.

If the issue is bad in law firms and at the bar, they are even worse in the judiciary. Judicial appointments are by definition made from the top of the legal profession, and as long as the latter remains predominantly male, so will the judiciary. Moreover, on the whole women are less likely to apply to become judges before being wholly confident they have the skills and experience to do the job, which is less the case for men, for whom competitive positioning may play a part in career progression. Women judges therefore tend to be older on appointment and so have shorter judicial careers.

An interesting issue concerns the different experiences of women working in law firms and those who move ‘in-house’ as part of a corporate legal department. The latter is seen almost as an escape route from male-culture dominated law firms, with the female flow overwhelmingly towards in-house, where women find far greater flexibility. Corporates are ahead generally in culture-shift and particularly in flexibility and home-working. Over time, as more women head up corporate legal departments, so client-power might have an effect on the working practices of law firms. As in so many professional areas, companies – and the individuals at the top of companies – like to work with like-minded organisations and individuals, so that law firms which share similar values on gender to their clients may well benefit. However, there are countervailing pressures; a typical corporate will invariably use their retained law firm as a pressure valve – the tight teams that corporates run, and the very flexibility they offer, means that work overload gets pushed out to law firms. Client in-house legal departments run by women are as prone as anyone else to piling the pressure on law firms, so stoking the long-hours culture.

Predictably the long-hours culture is a continuing concern. One view is that the huge overheads which major practices, with vast buildings in the City, have to carry inevitably drives them to demand body and soul commitment from their associates. Another is that a senior partner’s success is dependent on him (usually him) driving his junior associates in the same way as he was driven before making partner. In theory the billable hour practice ought to help flexible working, as work isn’t dependent on location. But the simple fact is that solutions that promote work flexibility remain dependent predominantly on men, not women, and while cultures remain ingrained, significant change will be difficult.

However, lack of flexibility for child-care is not the only endemic cultural problem in law firms; single women also often experience difficulty with cultures that expect conformity not difference. There is a general feeling that male partners all too often continue to appoint ‘in their own image’. Many younger women undoubtedly are fearful that, in ‘joining’ the aggressive yet conforming male-determined culture of the law, they are endangering their sexual attractiveness. Let’s not hide the reality that underneath most career-engaged, highly intelligent and rising women, are feminine creatures, with all the desires and vulnerabilities that go with this fact. What is needed is for women to assert themselves as women, not as clone men. One key conclusion from the Women of the World Conference discussion of women in the law was clear: fear not for your sexuality. Put on those killer heels and that sassy outfit and be who you are – and be proud of it!