Gender Equality in the Legal Profession

Gender balance has always remained challenging in business, and the legal profession is no exception. Women are well represented at the entry-level, bassing over 60% of the applications from July 2012 to July 2013. However, this is not reflected in the promotions to partners; women have remained continuously underappreciated in the upper echelon of the legal profession.

Companies explained it in many ways, such as problems with work-life balance and working conditions, the attraction of in-house positions, women's apparent lack of ambition in chasing partnership positions, and the absence of women bosses who could nurture and encourage them towards partnership. By contrast, in the top twenty UK headquartered companies between 2008 and 2014, females constituted only 28.6% of overall partnership promotions across the UK. 

This is an improvement from the 22% of women promoted into partnership during the financial crisis, but there has been a freefall for the past year where women's partnership promotions fell from 33% to 28.5%. Women working in law firms such as Ashurst, Clifford Chance, and Freshfields have reported average women advancement of about 20%, with Taylor Wessing at the bottom of the list at 12%. It is no surprise that there were years when there were no women at the top of some of these firms at all.

There are some highlights as well: since 2008, firms such as Clyde & Co, Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), Bird & Bird, and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) have managed to promote women to the 30% mark in the number of partners since 2008 and Irwin Mitchell for more than a half of female partners since 2008. Between 2008 and 2010, Norton Rose Fulbright decided to promote only one female partner. However, significant changes have occurred, with women making up 37.5 percent of the promotions made since 2008.

Even if the total statistics are not encouraging, such barriers are being targeted, and new initiatives are being formed to break this limitation. Some legal companies have already published action plans that prescribe the desired outcome: Linklaters aims to secure a minimum of 30% female representation in the executive committee and worldwide panel. Other law firms like Pinsent Masons and Ashurst have also jumped on board, planning at least 25% of females in partnership and management positions by 2018. BLP is even more ambitious in its approach, claiming that it anticipates over 30 percent of overall women collaboration by 2018, even though they have just held a gender-free promotional round, as The Lawyer reports.
 
There is an above-average career challenge for women to be partners because firms have undertaken diversity initiatives so as to demystify this area. However, in October this year, HSF was able to give career advice to promising young female lawyers and also guide paid female partners who seek shares. Olswang appealed to their associates to take gender unconscious bias courses.

In addition, the administration is also doing its part to resolve the long-standing problems of child care: in UK law comes into coverage in April 2015, the law would let parents spread one year of leave between them after the delivery of the child. Legal experts were welcoming this initiative despite government estimates of only 2% to 8%, at the most 8% of fathers being covered by the plan. In fact, 40 percent of the partners of those surveyed felt it would be helpful to prolong the critical mass of women managers in the practice. Such initiatives and support structures like PLN, which targeted broad inclusion and female groups such as Women In Law London (WILL), suggest an understanding of these problems and determination to tackle them.

There is no doubt that such a noble action is justified, but it appears to be fair to state that law firms need to keep delivering the message of inclusion and true aspiration for a positive impact which seeks to achieve this through diversity instead of sheer unfortunate capture of markets. There is a need in the law firms to also advocate and give support to the women seeking partnership who should have gone through training and mentoring so as to understand that traditional barriers like childbirth and usual male supremacy do not have a hold anymore in pursuing their partnership goal. However, this must go hand in hand with building a culture where meritocracy is adhered to such that only the best talent, regardless of gender, is acquired and retained.