Legal News

More Female Partners: A Noble Goal, but How to Get There?

By Ashby Jones

As a law-firm goal, it sounds simple enough: increase the percentage of women partners. But in practicality, how does a law firm go about getting more women in the top ranks?

The issue was the topic of an interesting article this week in the UK’s The Lawyer. The focus of the article was Clifford Chance, which has pledged to increase its percentage of female partners to 30 percent.

As the Lawyer reports, however, “the firm has a long way to go.” Currently, only 15 percent of its partnership is female.

In speaking with the Lawyer, the firm’s managing partner, David Childs, was refreshingly candid, admitting that such a boost in the numbers likely won’t come easy. "None of us are happy about the figure being around 15 percent," says Childs. "Speaking to junior female lawyers, it's not good enough to say there's just 15 percent of the partnership female without making it clear that we want that to change. We wanted to give ourselves a goal to be able to make headway."

Fair enough. But how does a firm essentially double its ranks of female partners in short order? Childs says the firm is ­considering a range of options, including reviewing its partnership agreement to incorporate more flexible working opportunities. But he concedes it’s not an overnight process. "There's no one thing that will solve the problem," says Childs. "It's something that all firms face and there are many ways you can approach it."

One problem, says Childs, is that pursuing a quick fix leads to problems. "There's a real concern around positive discrimination," he says. "Women don't want to be promoted on that basis. We need to find ways to change things over time. It's a gradual process."

We’ll pause here, LBers, to throw out a question: What’s the answer here? What should be the goal for a law firm on this front?

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t include in our post a provocative quote in the Lawyer story from Dawn Dixon, a partner at Webster Dixon and a former member of the Association of Women Solicitors.

"The main question I'd ask is, how and why are firms doing this?" she asks. "Not every woman wants to be a partner. The reality is that many want to do their job, live their life and spend time with their family. Partnership is not the Holy Grail."

LBers, any thoughts on Dixon’s quote?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 30, 2009 (boomark / email).