Threat to law firms from lack of senior female talent highlighted Global Law Summit

The session, entitled ‘Women in Law: the pipeline is broken. Why this matters, and what can be done’, was well attended by senior members of the legal profession, both male and female.

It was chaired by Catrin Griffiths, editor of The Lawyer, and included Philip Goodstone, partner at EY;Sylvie Watts, board member of Skarbek Associates(pictured above); Sascha Grimm, associate at Cooley (UK) LLP (pictured right) and WILL chair; Tamara Box, partner and global chair of the financial industry group at Reed Smith; and Sophie Chandauka, head of asset financing for Virgin Money Group and co-founder of the Black British Business Awards.

The session opened with a live poll revealing that 64 per cent of the audience believed that women do not have as good a chance as men in reaching senior levels of leadership in law.

This highlighted that whilst the panel was generally optimistic about the potential for change, it was not without a strong air of caution.

With 97 per cent of the audience agreeing (via live poll) that having more equal representation at the top of the profession improves competitiveness and sustainability, Sylvie Watts brought to the fore the damaging impact of not addressing this issue.

She said: “Law firms are currently losing a lot of women at a critical point. This dilutes the pool from which partners are being chosen and dilutes it from a qualitative point of view… new technology and changing demographics means that law firms are going to have to review their model and structure or risk becoming outmoded entirely.”

Revealing some of the current statistics on women in senior levels within the legal profession the issue at hand was quickly identified as being one of promotion, not attrition.

For the past 23 years, women have made up the majority of all entrants into the legal profession and currently make up 61 per cent of all lawyers under the age of 36.

In 2014, 28.5 per cent of partnership promotions went to women.

Tamara Box said: “Whilst there is a seismic shift in the dialogue around the diversity issue taking place, this is a multifaceted problem and it will need multifaceted solutions to address it.

“The current business model is broken and it will have to change.”

The discussion, both energetic and positive throughout, addressed a number of solutions that the panellists suggested for both young women coming into the profession, as well as those senior leaders in the sector today.

These included “reverse mentoring”, unconscious bias training, informing clients of job sharing initiatives, promoting positive stories of women at senior level and making gender targets part of the business’s key metrics.

“Management need to wipe all assumptions about the women in front of them and start afresh with new conversations, focused on changing the rhetoric around diversity in the legal profession from a negative to a positive one” said Sascha Grimm.

Followed by an active Q&A session with the audience, the panel summarised the gaping holes currently in place eating away at the legal profession.

With a white paper produced by Skarbek’s Sylvie Watts entitled: “Diversify or die: Law firms that do not address the root causes of gender diversity risk being made redundant” available, the closing remarks by Sophie Chandauka emphasised that both women and law firms need to work on addressing their strategy if they hope not to be made obsolete: “hope alone is not a strategy”.

Many of the attendees committed (via electronic voting) to incorporate some of the measures discussed within their own firms.