denotes premium content | Feb 8 2012 Feature
posted 22 Apr 2010 in Volume 2 Issue 3
IN EARLY 2009, CATHERINE Bailey, a partner at SJ Berwin, killed herself shortly after returning to work from her third maternity leave. In this desperately sad case, there was much comment and speculation that it was the impossibility of managing children and work that drove Catherine to take her own life.
Alison Thompson, the coroner, told the court “Ms Bailey was a very capable and professional woman and a loving mother of three young children who found it hard to meet the demands of motherhood and the high standard she had set herself”.
Catherine was a partner practising in banking and regulatory disputes, including Financial Services Authority investigations, investment mismanagement cases and financial markets litigation — an area of the law where 60 hour weeks, it was said, would not be unusual and where, therefore, working evenings and weekends were the norm. It was reported at the time that the volume of her work had increased significantly since the economic downturn began.
In 2009 the Law Society launched its Diversity and Inclusion charter, yet reaching partnership for women solicitors is still a minority occupation — out of the top 30 UK law firms, the proportion of women solicitors at partnership level in 2009 was 27 per cent.
Women have been in the majority of those entering the profession for many years and yet one of the key issues for women solicitors remains that that they are not breaking through into partnership (see table). Why is this?
My firm, Pannone LLP (based in Manchester), achieved first place in the Black Solicitors’ Network Diversity League table 2009 (measuring Top 100 firms’ performance), for highest number of female partners (43.75 per cent). Second is Keoghs (42.86 per cent) (based in Bolton) and only two of the top ten in the list might be described as ‘City’ or ‘national’ firms. Only 14 of the top 100 law firms exceed the national average for women partners.
Women in the law Figures from 2008 show that:
- 24.3 per cent of partners were women;
- 44.4 per cent of solicitors were women;
- 63.4 per cent of trainee solicitors were women;
- 63.7 per cent of students enrolling with the Law Society were women.
What conclusion can we draw from all this? It is that the demands that are placed on partners in most of the larger firms are very difficult (and perhaps for many women, impossible) to meet at the same time as bringing up children; many do not try and settle for a career lower down the ladder or throw in the towel altogether — and who can blame them.
Many firms based outside London and firms outside of the Top 100, however, demonstrate that all that talent and education does not need to languish in a less high flying career — because it isn’t necessary to work 60 hours a week to achieve partnership and perform at the highest level. I suspect that things are not about to improve in City and national firms any time soon — according to numerous articles in the legal press, the recession has increased workload following redundancies; the fear of losing your income will keep noses firmly to the grindstone and this will not be a good environment to raise issues of work/life balance, however many reports and charters are published to demonstrate the improvements in performance that flow it.
Rachel Dobson is operations partner at Pannone LLP. She can be contacted at rachel.dobson@pannone.co.uk
