Leading ladies

The UK’s legal market has never been an easy place for female lawyers. This became abundantly clear in the 2009 LB100, which charts the UK’s top 100 law firms by revenue. Among these firms only 22% of the partners and 17% of the equity partners are female. Given that the overall percentage of female lawyers is 47%, it is hardly encouraging to see that only 37% of those promoted to partner in 2008/09 were women. These statistics do not make good reading for young British female associates, particularly if they are working at one of the Major City or Global Elite firms, where the percentage of female partners is 18% and 16% respectively. Some might well be tempted to ask what they can do to improve their chances of becoming a market-leading commercial lawyer. One surprising answer is: move to Turkey.

It isn’t what one might expect from Turkish commercial law firms but, when it comes to gender balance, they make their UK counterparts look positively backward.

‘People perceive this country to be quite conservative when it comes to equality in the workforce,’ says Yesim Bezen, a partner at Bezen & Partners (where two of the three partners are female), who also spent six years at Clifford Chance. ‘Obviously looking at the country as a whole, yes there is still inequality in certain regions of Turkey. In the bigger cities where people live, especially when you have parents who are already educated, that perception changes drastically.’

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