Retaining Female Lawyers - Building Gender Balanced Business

• With women quitting corporate law firms at two to three times the rate of male lawyers, managers need to know how to retain their high-potential women — and the firm’s big investments in them.

• Women make up almost half of law firm associates, according to Catalyst Canada, but only 16% of partners.

• When a female associate quits, the firm loses its investment in her, which ranges from $250,000 to $600,000. Loss of a partner is even more of a waste.

• Women who return from parental leave are especially at risk, as they will have fallen off the usual partnership schedule.

• Sixty per cent of female lawyers surveyed by Catalyst said they feared that flextime would limit opportunities for career advancement.

• One system that often works is reduced hours, in which an associate handles the same type of cases as a full-time associate but fewer of them, so hopes for promotion to partner are not hurt.

• Laurin Blumenthal Kleiman, co-chair of Sidley Austin LLP’s women’s committee and a proponent of the reduced-hours program said, “It’s not about just working part time. It’s about having the high-profile cases, or having the high-profile deals –- but just having fewer of them.”

• Men, she added, also like the system, as it fits the generational change in families.

The Globe and Mail article