‘The idea of having my decisions overridden or determined by a bunch of middle-aged men was so depressing that I just went and set up my own firm.’
Ayesha Vardag, celebrity divorce lawyer and founder of international family law firm Vardags, is explaining the moment that crystallised her decision to build a firm of her own.
Since launching the firm in 2005, it has developed into one of the country’s leading private client practices – ranked Tier 1 for family in The Legal 500 in London, Cambridge and Manchester, with Vardag herself recognised as a Hall of Fame partner.
While Vardag’s motivations for going it alone may differ from those of other female founders, she is part of a growing band of women who have chosen not to sit back and wait for the law firm model to evolve into something new.
Instead, they have chosen to create a new template: specialist, founder-led, and conflict-free boutiques with cultures they can shape for themselves.
‘I didn’t need a law firm infrastructure for what I do. It was like a deadweight’
The narrative around women in law has shifted markedly over the past two decades. Women now marginally outnumber men at associate level, flexible working has become mainstream for all genders, and overt sexism is far less tolerated.
Yet progress at the top remains slower. Solicitors Regulation Authority diversity data shows that only 32% of full equity partners are women, a figure that drops to 28% at the largest firms.
For International Women’s Day 2026, Legal Business spoke to the female founders behind a cluster of high-performing specialist firms — Alius Law, Pallas Partners, CM Murray, Manders Law and EMM, alongside Vardags — about why they chose to build firms of their own, and the structural pressures that continue to shape life at the top of the profession.
A light bulb moment
For Bree Taylor, it was a ‘light bulb moment’ that sparked the creation of her aviation and commercial litigation boutique, Alius Law, at the height of the Covid pandemic.
‘It wasn’t that I wanted to work from home,’ she says. ‘It was the fact that I didn’t need a law firm infrastructure for what I do. It was like a deadweight. What I was actually doing was bringing in revenue that was paying for a whole lot of stuff I didn’t need.’
Divested of management obligations and office infrastructure, she found her boutique model could work just as well: ‘We were pitching the same quality as before, but with people entirely focused on client work. We were conflict-free and super specialist.’
There can be a temptation to frame the stories of women striking out alone around flexibility, balance, and lifestyle accommodation rather than business decisions.
None of the female founders Legal Business spoke to accept this narrative, however. For them, building a boutique was never a retreat from long hours. Rather it represented a shrewd, competitive response to client demands.
Tamlyn Edmonds (pictured right), co-founder of Legal 500 Tier 1-ranked private prosecution firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon, saw a gap in the market when her specialist practice at the Department of Health began to merge with general crime as funding tightened.
‘There wasn’t a specialist firm doing it,’ she recalls. ‘I resigned; I had three small children at the time, so it was a big risk. I was the breadwinner, and we had no clients on day one,’ she says.
Pallas Partners founder Natasha Harrison saw a similar opportunity on the disputes side; explaining that she saw room in the market for a ‘high-end commercial litigation boutique with a strong presence in both London and New York.’
For Ayesha Vardag the motivation was to move family law away from any perception of being ‘high street’ and ‘low rent’.
‘I wanted to bring absolute legal rigour and top-level commercial structuring and savvy to the field, tailored to HNW individuals,’ she says. ‘That was my USP.’
While all of the women spotted different gaps in their respective markets, what united their intentions was a desire to build firms offering access to senior lawyers, deep expertise rather than scale, conflict-free mandates and transparent pricing.
And with boutiques on the rise more generally in the UK, it seems the broader market is moving in their direction.
Harrison (pictured right) observes: ‘smart, sophisticated clients are unpacking their legal services – using one firm for corporate, another for finance, and another for litigation, in each case best in class.’
Taylor goes further, ‘Boutiques are absolutely on the up. I can’t think of a time when I have seen so many clients actively seeking out boutiques. The story is always the same: it’s too difficult dealing with large law firms. Large fees. No leadership.’
Their numbers bear this out, with revenue growth at Pallas and Vardags significantly outpacing the LB100 average. At Pallas – – turnover hit £20m for the year to December 2024 – 39% on the previous year, while Vardags reported £21m for the year to March 2025, a 15% increase on 2024.
An alternative culture
But the motivations to form their own firms go beyond economic incentives. Autonomy and the ability to align culture with commercial strategy are recurring themes. And while none of the partners frame their move purely as a response to cultural sticking points, machismo, old boys’ clubs, a lack of accountability, and sexism are among the experiences cited from their earlier careers.
Harrison says: ‘I always say that I wanted to have the opportunity to build something from the ground up; to set the strategy, the culture, and grow organically.’
‘It’s a culture that is very different to the one that I grew up in at previous firms,’ she adds.
‘From having my own firm, I never for a moment thereafter felt held back’
For Mary-Ann Wright, launching family law boutique Manders Law allowed her to build a team that reflected the way she wanted to work.
‘You can’t be the best version of yourself if you are not authentic,’ she says. ‘And it’s difficult to be authentic if you don’t have the capacity to shape the influence and culture in an organisation.’
Her all-women team was not by design but has become an advantage.
‘It makes for a very comfortable space. We find that there is less ego, and we are all pretty good at active listening and understanding the challenges that women face in the profession.’
For Vardag (pictured right), independence offered control: ‘From having my own firm, I never for a moment thereafter felt held back,’ she says.
Taylor is similarly direct: ‘I bailed out – I’d had enough of many things. I wish I had done it sooner.’
Confidence building
Many of the founders interviewed spoke of grappling with self-doubt early in their careers, or referenced seeing a pattern in women around them describing both internal and external pressure to demonstrate competence more frequently than male peers.
Vardag remembers fighting for credibility in what was at that point a largely closed-off world: ‘I was scared that everybody would laugh at me and say what the hell is she doing here? I really had to fortify myself mentally.’
Her firm’s growth reflects the approach she adopted in response to those early pressures. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s some kind of stubbornness in me… I’ve never been easily cowed,” she says.
‘As your career progresses, you develop a much thicker skin’
For others, confidence took time to build. Harrison says: ‘I think if I did anything differently, it would probably have been to have more self-belief at the outset. Women tend to underestimate themselves.’
Edmonds offers a reason: ‘You do get judged as a woman; I feel far more than as a man. And so you have to deal with that and accept that. And yes, it gets to you sometimes, but as I’ve got older, it bothers me less.’
‘I think as your career progresses, you develop a much thicker skin,’ she adds.
For many of those interviewed, mentorship and visible role models helped counteract that uncertainty by providing a point of reference and emulation.
Taylor puts it simply. At a time when very few women held senior positions, the few that did showed what was possible: ‘the most help they gave me was just to be there and be them.’
‘If there are no women, then it is quite hard for women coming through to know how to handle certain things. When you see other women doing things and doing it successfully, you can pick up quite a lot from that,’ she adds.
For Wright (pictured right), a ‘netball team’ of fellow successful women sustains her, offering guidance, support and friendship.
But the support hasn’t come only from women, with many describing male colleagues as mentors and advocates during key stages of their careers.
As Clare Murray of CM Murray puts it: ‘There are some incredible empathetic, supportive coaching-type male leaders. Just as there are incredible empathetic supportive female leaders.’
The parental leave penalty
For several founders, experiences or observations in their early careers shaped how they approached building their own firms – particularly around parenting. Even though motherhood is no longer a career killer for women, it can still have corrosive effects.
Harrison says: ‘When I had my children, due to the culture I was working in at the time, I had to make huge sacrifices.’
‘Women will check themselves out of the game, because of a sense of what they ought to be doing’
Murray (pictured right) meanwhile talks of the ‘maternal leave penalty’; referencing how easily client relationships fall away or are diverted to others during long absences and are not then proactively reinstated or replaced on return.
While flexible and hybrid models are becoming increasingly embedded at large firms, cultural expectations at home have not shifted as quickly.
Vardag questions ‘why women are encouraged, by everything around them, to feel that they should be the default point when it comes to childcare – and not in a way that is cognisant of their need to make their way in the world.’
That pressure still shapes career decisions long before partnership discussions arise.
‘It is all there for the taking if you want it,’ Vardag says. ‘What is hardest is that women are made to feel guilty about wanting it relative to having a domestic role.’
And so, as seniority rises, Vardag says that ‘women will check themselves out of the game,’ – ‘not because nobody wanted them, but because of a sense of what they ought to be doing.’
For many founders, building their own firms created an opportunity for redress. Several say they have introduced formal support mechanisms – from designated return-to-work officers to structured client reintroductions – designed to prevent long-term career setbacks.
‘It is about creating a culture where women can thrive as both lawyers and parents,’ says Harrison.
What’s next
Looking ahead, the founders describe a profession that is slowly changing.
Edmonds points to the strong pipeline of female associates at her firm: ‘I’ve seen far more women and certainly junior women now coming into the profession. We have a huge number of female associates who are enormously talented and will definitely become partners,’ she says.
Murray (pictured) recognises a generational shift in attitudes. ‘Young women coming into the profession are confident in a way that I certainly didn’t feel; they are quite clear-sighted as to what they will and won’t tolerate, and what their expectations are in terms of family life and support,’ she says.
‘Many young women still feel vulnerable about potential consequences if they do speak up’
At the same time, she notes a more complicated reality. ‘It feels like young women are much more empowered – although it’s also clear that many also feel vulnerable about the potential consequences if they do speak up about unfair treatment and misuse of power. It’s important we have the standards, processes and effective leadership from the top to ensure we protect and support those young women (and also men) who do take a stand and speak up.’
Progress depends on what firms choose to do next. Many believe change will 
only come through consistency.
Harrison puts it succinctly: ‘It’s female leadership, it’s driving change organically, it’s mentoring women coming up,’ she says.
‘It’s individual, but it’s also cultural within firms. You have got to really believe in diversity, not just tick a box.’
For Taylor (pictured right), structural disadvantages remain at the fore:
‘It is really hard to effect change when you’re one woman. You have to almost make it your sole mission to go out and improve the lot for women in the profession. But you’ve somehow got your day job to do as well.’
And some old habits die particularly hard.
‘Mansplaining is still completely out of control in the legal profession,’ she concludes. ‘It’s tiresome.’
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The discussions reflected how rapidly the external environment is reshaping the demands placed on in-house legal teams, with a big-name line-up of panellists sharing their perspectives.
The afternoon also saw a frank and open discussion between Smith & Nephew group GC Helen Barraclough and her go-to outside counsel, Reed Smith partner Ben Koplin (pictured), who examined the ins and outs of a productive adviser-client relationship and what GCs can do when expectations of external counsel are not being met.
The afternoon featured a keynote speech from Sarah Wynn-Williams (pictured), former director of global public policy at Facebook, as well as a crisis management session
