It was not until the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 that women in England and Wales were able to become lawyers. The Solicitors Act 1843 did not consider women “persons” and barred them from the profession.
Almost 100 years on, women are making history in the legal profession. For the first time, women make up the majority of practising solicitors. The latest annual statistical report from the Law Society showed there were 69,995 women solicitors, 366 more than the number of men.
If current rates of growth continue, the Law Society estimates that by 2022 there will be approximately 10,000 more female practising solicitors than men.
“We have come from zero to the majority – that is massive,” says Dana Denis-Smith, chief executive of Obelisk Support and founder of the First 100 Years project, which charts and celebrates the history of women in the profession.
Women, says Denis-Smith, have made a huge impact on the sector. Last year, Lady Hale became the first female president of the supreme court. Also on the bench of the UK’s highest court are Lady Justice Black and Lady Justice Arden, taking the number of women among the 12 justices to three.
Following a flurry of appointments this year, more than a quarter of the court of appeal’s 38 judges are female and 22 of the 95 high court judges are women.
But, while recruiting women into the profession is not a problem – twice as many women as men are starting law degrees and a record 64% of new trainees in last year’s intake were woman – retention and promotion is. Men are twice as likely to be partners and hold the majority of senior management posts.
As for barristers, women account for 37% of the practising bar, but fewer than 14% of Queen’s counsel – a group of eminent lawyers appointed by the monarch.
Remuneration is another issue. Nearly 50 years since the Equal Pay Act 1970, women solicitors still face a 27% gender pay gap – higher than the national average of 19%.
A report from MPs on the business, energy and industrial strategy committee recently criticised the “painfully slow” progress law firms have made on gender diversity. Stating that it will take “many years” for firms to “look anything like gender-balanced at the more senior levels”, MPs urged them to “redouble efforts to speed things up”.
The main barrier, says Funke Abimbola, former general counsel at multinational healthcare company Roche, is the “structure of the profession and its inherently misogynistic culture” that values long hours, presenteeism, sky-high hourly billing targets and networking.
Part of the problem, adds Lucinda Case, managing director of Thomson Reuters’ legal UK & Ireland business, comes from being in the professional services industry, where “availability is the crux”, as well as ever more demanding buyers of legal services. “The pressure on firms to deliver, cuts out women and men who want a decent work-life balance,” says Case.
Case is on the advisory board for the Thomson Reuters Transforming Women’s Leadership in the Law programme, which seeks to help firms accelerate progress and encourage more women into leadership roles.
Studies from McKinsey and Credit Suisse (pdf) demonstrate that higher female participation at senior levels improves financial performance and innovation. Law firms are starting to act. The 30% Club was launched in 2010, with major firms committing to 30% female partnership by 2020, and more than a third of all firms have signed up to the Law Society’s diversity and inclusion charter.
Firms are addressing the gender imbalance with a number of solutions. Many are permitting part-time working and using technology to enable agile, flexible and remote working. Others are promoting return-to-work initiatives, allowing extended parental leave and facilitating coaching and mentoring, including reverse mentoring – where senior people are paired with more junior lawyers.
Some firms are also tackling unconscious bias, by making the allocation of work fairer and more transparent and ensuring gender balance in partner progression programmes.
Halebury, a provider of in-house legal services, set up in 2007 by Janvi Patel and Denise Nurse, shows the impact that changing operational structures and ditching the reliance on the hourly rate can have. More than 95% of its work is billed using fixed fees or day rates, says Patel, and it has a 50:50 gender split among its staff.
Susan Bright, UK and Africa managing partner of Hogan Lovells, suggests that male and female lawyers generally get equal pay for equal work. But the gender pay gap reporting has shone a light on the scarcity of women in the top jobs. It has also forced firms to examine the effectiveness of their efforts to redress gender imbalance, says Laura King, partner and global head of people and talent at Clifford Chance.
Despite the collective desire for change, most agree the pace has been slow. But some resist the idea of mandatory quotas, preferring aspirational targets.
Quotas, says Bright, are “deeply unhelpful”, can foster resentment and “make it easy for people to say a woman only got the job because she is a woman”.
Patel, however, is a convert and regards quotas as the only way to drive real progress. “We are not starting from an even base, but decades of history and entrenched structures that have favoured men. We have to shock the system into change,” she states.
The demands of corporate clients are making a difference, says Bright. “Gone are the days when you could turn up and pitch to 10 middle-aged white men.” Case suggests these changes in attitudes and values will drive progress. But real change, she says, requires sponsorship and buy-in from the leadership of law firms and a willingness to invest time addressing pipeline issues and ways to retain good people – both female and male.
For Bright, the answer is broader than just what is happening in the profession, but societal: “True equality will be when men get the opportunity to play an equal role domestically.
“I have three children and my husband took a career break to be frontline at home. He suffered more discrimination and exclusion at the school gate than I have ever faced at work.”
