Two law firms hit gender parity – and credit WFH

Stewart Cameron, Hicksons’ managing partner, said the firm had part-time and fully remote partners working overseas and interstate, and had embraced remote working well before the pandemic.

“People seem to like it, and they’re staying with us, so we are able to get the progression from senior associate level to the partnership,” he said.

The firm has no requirement for staff to spend a minimum number of days in the office.

The two firms with 50 per cent or more female partners said rivals could not assume the high percentage of women in fee-earning roles would naturally filter upwards.

“When I was at law school in the 80s, we had a 50-50 split back then, but we are still yet to see gender parity at partnership level,” Ms Collins said.

The latest survey showed that almost half of new partner appointments in the second half of the year were women. They have never accounted for a majority of new partner appointments, despite representing at least 60 per cent of the senior associate cohort since 2016.

Ashurst was the best represented of the big firms. Women made up 43 per cent of its local partnership, while Gilbert + Tobin met its 40 per cent target for the first time.

Despite the progress, laggards remain. At a third of the surveyed firms, women made up less than 30 per cent of the partners. At prominent firms Thomson Geer, Arnold Bloch Leibler and Allen & Overy, they accounted for less than 25 per cent.

No accident

Ms Collins said firms needed to act to achieve gender equality at senior levels.

“If they genuinely wanted to achieve gender equality, there’s no reason why they can’t, because more women are progressing through the profession than ever before,” she said.

Lander & Rogers updated its parental leave and flexible working policies to attract and retain high-achieving women. But Ms Collins said “it’s not about any one initiative or policy. It’s about an organisation’s entire culture, leadership and operating model”.

“There has to be a collective desire and focus to achieve gender equality.”

Gilbert + Tobin cracked its long-held 40 per cent gender balance target in the latest survey. All three of its partner recruits in the past six months were women.

Chief executive Sam Nickless said the firm made recruiters aware it was looking for female candidates for partner-level roles.

It had a well-established cohort of senior female partners – Gilbert + Tobin has consistently had more female partners than its big rivals – who served as role models.

“We’ve had a critical mass that we have been able to build upon,” Mr Nickless said.

Ashurst had the greatest proportion of female partners of the big firms, at 43per cent; for the other firms, the figure hovered around 35 per cent.

Corrs Chambers Westgarth and Clayton Utz were laggards. Fewer than 30 per cent of the Corrs and Clayton Utz partnerships were women. The latter has hired six partners since July, only one of them female.

Little progress

Arnold Bloch Leibler and Allen & Overy remained the worst performers on partner parity.

Only four of Allen & Overy’s 25 local partners are women. Australian managing partner Jason Denisenko said the firm was making progress on targets, but “we are not where we want to be”.

The firm had doubled the number of female partners, from two last year, and greater diversity “is profoundly important and essential to our future success”.

At Melbourne-based Arnold Bloch Leibler, fewer than 20 per cent of partners were women, a figure that has not changed in the past decade.

Shaneen Argall, the firm’s director of human resources, said: “We have a very stable partnership where long tenure is the norm … ABL is a place where neither the size nor expansion of the firm has been considered a proxy for success.

“While this is a noble approach that has many benefits, it precludes the firm from achieving a quick fix when it comes to gender parity in the partnership.”