Preparing for partnership

Maegen Morrison, partner in the corporate practice, at Lovells reveals the obstacles facing women aiming for partnership and offers an insight in how to overcome them.

11 a.m. I calculated times as I gathered up my bag from my desk and began to slip out of my heels and into flat, comfortable shoes (all the better to walk fast in). IF the traffic wasn’t too bad, I could get home in time to let in the washing machine repair man (who was, of course, only able to make house calls between 12 and four) and then IF he was on time (a big “IF”) and IF the tubes worked properly (as the chances of getting a cab back from South London to work in the middle of the day were remote at best), I should be able to make it back in time for my two p.m. meeting. And then we might have some clean clothes to wear for the rest of the week. With one flat shoe on and one still in heels, Jack (not his real name), the supervising partner on one of my transactions, burst into my office. Not letting my lop-sided appearance put him off his stride, he launched straight into a discussion of the amendments to the draft agreement that we had just received. “Sorry Jack, I’ll have to catch up with you later. We have no washing machine at the moment and I’ve got to go home to let in the repair man.” Jack looked startled. A look of complete bewilderment slowly crossed his face. “Oh.” he said. “Oh, my wife never has that problem. She has two washing machines.”
The positive attributes that are needed to get to the top of the legal profession are easy to list: ambition, focus, drive, hard work (with a pinch of luck), intelligence, creativity and a deep abiding passion for what one does. Turning those attributes into success in one’s career and managing to overcome the obstacles that are encountered along the way, such as balancing work and family life, is not so straightforward. Women (and an increasing number of men) find obstacles such as this difficult to overcome in their quest to reach the top of their profession.

Managing work and family life
Having two washing machines is not necessarily the solution to being able to balance both work and family life (incidentally, Jack’s wife had not worked since they married). It was, however, one of the more creative solutions that I had heard about!
The balance between work and family life is one area which is always discussed in relation to women’s career progression. In my experience it is now a topic often discussed by men, a result of the ever-apparent shift away from the female member of a couple having the secondary career or staying at home to manage family life to these tasks being jointly shared. It is also an area where there are no easy solutions. No-one thinks that making partnership in a law firm (and then progressing through a career as a partner) requires anything less than a substantial commitment of time and energy which makes it difficult to commit the same time and energy to family life. At a time when more and more women are entering the legal profession, many decide to explore alternative careers or choose not to try for partnership and one of the main reasons seems to be the difficulties of balancing work and family life. But firms such as Lovells are taking on this challenge. By offering flexible working hours, remote working and alternate career paths to partnership, they are keen to keep the female lawyer population in the profession.

Embrace flexible working
‘Everyone knows that working from home is just a euphemism for having a day off.’ The ‘wise’ words of the majority even as recently as five years ago.
Personally, I am a big fan of flexible working. Today, IT solutions enabling remote access into the office IT system from home have made it more effective than ever before to work from home. Working from home is no longer perceived to be an excuse for catching up with a bit of day-time TV, but a genuine alternative to working in the office enabling you to work around the demands of modern family life. For lawyers it is still necessary to be in the office for the majority of the time; it’s important for many factors, including team morale, to be visible. However, provided that you are still contactable in the normal way and your team appreciates that working from home is a normal working day, flexible working can take the pressure off when there are times when family life demands that you are at home.
There are of course other times where flexible working is not going to be the solution to any of the competing priorities in your life. This is when having a supportive network comes into its own, whether it is a partner, family members or paid-for help.

Build a supportive network
“I’ve got to be in New York from Sunday evening to Friday; you have to be in Vienna from Tuesday to Thursday. Who’s going to feed the cat?” is I am sure a problem many have faced.
And of course, it’s much more difficult when your dependents are of a human rather than a feline variety! Although it’s a generalisation, one thing that I think most successful women have in common is a supportive network. It clearly helps if your partner approaches family life on the basis that it is a shared endeavour which he or she is happy to help out with. It also helps if your extended family lives close by and is willing to help. This is often not the case for many women and some sort of investment in help is worthwhile to ease the burden. Devoting time and effort to a career means that you may need support in other areas of your life.
Also make clear to colleagues how your support networks work. Many will assume, for example, that once you have children, you may not be willing to travel for work and, for the best of intentions, may divert certain transactions away from you so as to not put you into a situation where you feel uncomfortable at having to say no to travelling. Depending on personal circumstances you may appreciate this but equally this may contribute to a feeling that you have been marginalised or sidetracked once you have children. It can be beneficial to make clear to work colleagues what you can and cannot do in relation to working hours and travel so that you do not feel that you are missing out on opportunities that you would otherwise have.
Sometimes it helps to talk through these types of issues with someone who has been in the same situation to get a different perspective on how to deal with these sorts of obstacles. This is where organisations such as women’s networks can be very helpful and this is an area in which many firms are investing.

Networking
“It’s not fair that women have networking functions and we don’t. We could have them too but there are too many of us...” So said a male colleague to me over drinks one night after I had attended a work-organised women’s network. He was referring to the logistical difficulties of fitting that many men into a meeting room. I thought to myself that he has neatly put his finger on exactly why women need networking events!
Women’s networks are valuable forums in which to discuss issues with other women in similar situations and to help you realise that you’re not alone – other women are experiencing or have experienced many of the same obstacles that you are facing! They can be a very effective way of broadening contacts and aiding your career progression as well as a great source of war stories. They can also be a complete waste of time. The key to getting value out of any network is to know what you want to gain before you join it. If you want to talk to peers in similar situations and you are a private-practice lawyer, then join a network that is geared towards that group of people. If you want to broaden your contacts to generate work then joining a network that has primarily private-practice lawyers is unlikely to be that beneficial. Look instead at joining a network in an industry sector that your practice relates to. Once you have joined the network, make an effort to get involved, you will need to put in effort to get the rewards. And only join a network that you are genuinely interested in.
If the idea of women’s networks doesn’t appeal to you but you still want to learn from another’s experience, then consider finding a mentor.

Mentoring
“It’s personality, not gender.” This was probably the best piece of advice I received about mentoring. Many firms have formal mentoring programmes that match women mentors with women mentees and I think it is incredibly important to take advantage of those programmes. They give you access to someone who you would not necessarily come into contact with and the benefit of their experience. However, it’s important to bear in mind that the best mentor for a woman at every stage of her career is not always another woman. The informal relationships that can develop with both male and female mentors can be equally, if not more, valuable than the mentors allocated through a formal mentoring programme. The vast majority of my informal mentors have been men rather than women (which might of course have something to do with the relative number of male partners in corporate law as compared to women when I started my career). As my career has progressed, so my mentors have changed. For example, the mentors that I had when I was starting out were mentors who had superb technical skills and commercial awareness. By contrast, my current informal mentor has particularly good marketing skills. I have always thought that the most valuable mentors are those people who have a skill that you feel that you lack or that you would like to concentrate on developing further, provided that you also ‘click’ with your mentor. You have to have an easy personal relationship with your mentor to get the full benefit from the relationship.
Mentoring should also be thought of as two hands stretched out, one in the direction that you want to go and one in the direction that you came from. If you’ve been helped by a mentor, then help others along the way. If you haven’t been helped by a mentor, then you probably know better than most the areas on which you would have appreciated having a mentor and this can turn you into a very effective mentor. And, of course, if you’ve been helped by a woman along the way, make sure that you help other women in the same way.

‘Queen bee’ syndrome
“You should be friends with her.” “Why?” “Because she’s another woman...” Putting aside the normal factors that mean that you will get along with some people better than others, there are some women who seem to think that their position at the top will be somehow threatened if another woman also makes it. Thankfully, in my experience, women like this are becoming rarer and rarer as more women progress to the top of their careers. However, being a successful woman among other successful women can be a bit of a double-edged sword. No-one expects every man to be friends with every other man in his peer group and yet a lot of attention is paid to successful women who don’t get along well with every other successful woman in their sphere. Until the number of women at the top of their careers increases, this is probably an area where women need to be more conscious of the way in which they are perceived. It would be a pity if women decided to opt out of their career progression not for reasons of work-life balance or for lack of opportunity but simply because they didn’t like the look of the role models in front of them!
The legal profession has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time in encouraging more women to rise to the top of the legal profession or to stay in the profession at a level that satisfies them. The best advice that I can give to anyone starting out is:

Choose your firm wisely;
Make the most of the networks and mentors available to you; and,
Finally, be passionate about what you do and become the best lawyer that you can be.

Maegen Morrison is partner in the corporate practice at international law firm Lovells. She can be contacted at Maegen.Morrison@lovells.com.