My anecdotal evidence (mostly based on reading the Daily Telegraph I accept) is that there are more and more legal cases of City firms behaving badly towards female staff.
So perhaps I am not surprised to read that female friendly law firms in the provinces are outperforming ones in the City when it comes to retaining, rewarding and appreciating female colleagues. This is what recent research by website magazine Legal Week confirms and that, over the last three years, regional firms promoted on average 37% of female partners, compared with some 20% in the top 10 City firms. And, on average again, across the UK’s top 30 legal firms, just under 28% of promotions have been female ie fewer than three vacancies out of ten have been filled by women.
While women make up less than 19% of the partnership on average across the UK top 30 as a whole, this figure falls to 16% at the top 10 City firms, but increases to nearly 24% in regional practices.
Shoosmiths has emerged as the most female-friendly law firm with women making up just over half of its recent promotions and a third of its partnership overall. Shoosmiths chief executive Claire Rowe said:
“The reason we have found it easier to retain female talent is that we have a transparent promotion criteria based on merit.”
Which is surely how it should be but perhaps Shoosmith is managing to bolster female confidence levels to positively encourage more women to apply for these senior jobs whereas Holman Fenwick Willan, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Simmons & Simmons presumably aren’t with only 12%, 13% and 13% respectively employing female partners back in May 2009.
Deirdre Walker, Group Head of Commercial, Real Estates and Disputes at Norton Rose believes that it makes good sense for more law firms to be female friendly and more flexible when women in their 30s and 40s, for example, may have children or other caring commitments to satisfy.
Deirdre explains that “At various points in a female career other events are going on outside of work – this should not mean that our career is over. To end a career just because you want to put it on hold does not make commercial sense.”
Yet the reality is surely that when corporate legal men are in charge (as in the majority of cases) they are less likely to see the need to be flexible to retain females if men are available instead and may seem less likely to take these career breaks.
Whereas if a woman is in charge, as at Shoosmiths, she will know just how hard the right female will work to balance a career and her family commitments. Which is why the right women with family commitments should always be allowed to secure the job… even if they may need some compassionate leave and support at certain and unavoidable times.
I’d add to this debate that in my experience, ambitious men were more likely to change employers than ambitious women ( is there any evidence of this…) yet it was more often the women that got criticised for having babies rather than the fast moving CVs that were invariably male.
FOXY Steph
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