| Women at the top |
Members barThe increased emphasis given to gender balance seems to be having little impact. Could clichés surrounding glass ceilings and perceived positive discrimination actually be creating barriers to female achievement? LB speaks to five women managing partners to find out what it takes to succeed. By Maria Jackson According to the PR hype, law firms have placed equal opportunities at the top of their recruitment agenda. All of the top ten UK law firms by size have diversity statistics available to view on their websites, with nine out of ten monitoring the gender profile of partners (Eversheds shows a total staff figure). Just under half the firms in the LB100 have diversity figures publicly available (see LB197), with others such as Bristol-based Bond Pearce promising to follow suit. Yet while transparency is increasing, the actual figures make for dire reading. According to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) information gathered by Legal Business for its annual survey, around half of lawyers across the UK are female, but only a small margin (22%) are making it to partner, and of those only 17% have access to equity. To put it another way, less than one in five equity partners in Britain is female – and these figures only include the firms that were gutsy enough to send us diversity information. Of the 16% of firms that failed to supply gender balance statistics most will presumably have something to hide. The star performer for gender balance in 2008/09 was the London Midsizer peer group; it housed six of the top ten female-friendly firms and boasted a healthy 48% average for female lawyers, although the 28% average for female partners fell short of the Private Client peer group average of 29%. Interestingly, of the top three performers for growth in that peer group, two are run by female managing partners. IP heavyweight Bristows posted a whopping 19% rise in turnover for 2008/09 to £22.1m under the leadership of joint managing partners Pat Treacy and Paul Walsh. Alison Morley, managing director at Capsticks, meanwhile, oversaw a similar rise in turnover; (17%) to £23m. The biggest firm in the peer group – at number 30 with a turnover of £94.9m (up 8%) – was Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW), which is managed by Moira Gilmour. Outside of the Midsizers, Norton Rose posted a 6% rise in turnover to £314m, the third-best performance among the Major City peer group. Deirdre Walker manages the London office of this top-ten firm To read the rest of this article subscribe to Legal Business. 
|
