Penetrating the ivory tower: Women in law in NSW

By ROBBIE MASON.

Women are reshaping the upper echelons of NSW society and increasingly entering leadership positions within the state’s notoriously-conservative legal profession, a study, released by the Law Society of NSW last Thursday, has revealed.

The percentage of female solicitors in NSW earning incomes over $150,000 increased from 28 percent in 2021 to 31 percent in 2022, although 9 percent more males fell into the same income bracket in the latest data pool.

The state’s legal profession makes for a fascinating case study in industrial relations because women have outnumbered men in early-career graduate roles for years. Yet a gender wage gap has persisted.

According to the 2022 Annual Profile of Solicitors NSW, female lawyers have outnumbered men in the profession for the sixth year in a row. In 2022, the state’s legal workforce was 54 percent female and 46 percent male, the same as the year prior.

Consistent with the 2022 National Profile of Solicitors, published in May, NSW’s private practice, where issues of diversity are especially pronounced, achieved gender balance for the first time in 2022.

Cassandra Banks, President of the Law Society of NSW, said, “I’m encouraged by results that show some positive movement among private practice leadership positions since last year’s Profile.”

“While the overall private practice numbers are even, this Profile shows a pleasing, if gradual, increase in the proportion of women who hold principal or partner roles to 35 percent (up 2 percent from last year)”, Ms Banks continued.

“In 2013, only 24 percent of these leadership roles in private practice were female.”

Law experts welcome change but demand an accelerated pace

Ruth Heazlewood, a recently-elected board member for Diverse Women in Law, who currently works as the chambers manager at Public Defenders NSW, expressed approval of the legal profession’s progress in diversity.

“I want to congratulate the Law Society for having these profiles done,” she said. “It presents us with a good factual basis to start challenging preconceptions.”

But she told City Hub she would like to see change occur faster.

“I think change comes slowly regrettably. It takes a while for people to get their heads around change, particularly for the legal profession, which is quite conservative. It has been male-driven and male-dominated for a number of years.”

“The women out there practicing that I know of are extremely smart and capable practitioners, and that should be recognised at the upper levels of practice,” she continued.

“It’s somewhat disappointing that we haven’t made more headway.”

Michael Bradley, managing partner at Marque Lawyers, told City Hub that hiring more women is “an entry point into addressing embedded structural issues” but cautioned that further action is necessary for women to prosper in law.

“The bigger issue is the business model of law which is antithetical to a good work-life balance,” Bradley said. “It’s particularly challenging for people balancing family life with work.”

With a tagline that reads “law, done differently”, Marque Lawyers has become a role model of sorts, an outlier and quiet achiever in a cut-throat professional world dominated by male finger-pointing and fist-shaking; one seemingly unfazed by the bolshy board room antics of competitors.

“We’re about 85% female”, Bradley explained. “Historically that has been the case for the whole firm’s existence.”

According to Bradley, Marque Lawyers, from its very beginning 15 years ago, developed a business model that was designed to support female retention in the workforce. Accordingly, the workplace is largely devoid of “rat race politics” and “internal competitiveness”. There is also less emphasis on time-costing.

Upon reaching out to Bradley last week, while he was away on holiday, City Hub received the following automated message: “From now until 1 July I am on leave, lounging around Europe and not even pretending to work. I do not feel bad about this. Don’t worry, your email will be read and responded to and, if it really really needs my personal attention, that’s what it’ll get. After my siesta. Okay, ciao.”

It’s not the kind of automated message you expect to receive from a managing partner at a law firm. But this is a firm with an astoundingly large Twitter following and a penchant for posting political commentary online.

Diversity initiatives are vital

Bradley explained that the 50-strong law firm has long had an “informal internal policy” of prioritising briefing female barristers “at every opportunity” and developing relationships with them.

“We have been tracking this ourselves to hold ourselves accountable”, he continued.

“We’re not shy about a bit of affirmative action where it’s a practical necessity. Men have dominated the bar, particularly the senior bar, and have done so always.”

It appears that smaller firms such as Marque Lawyers and advocacy groups like Diverse Women in Law, despite their inferior resources, have taken up the slack in an industry where the elite firms are threatening to go backwards when it comes to diversity.

Drawing data for its regular law partnership survey, which examines Australia’s biggest 50 law firms, the Australian Financial Review recorded that only 41 percent of the 352 lawyers promoted to partner at the end of 2022 were female. This represented the most significant slump in female appointments to partner in three years.

Bradley is appreciative of the data released by the Law Society of NSW but he warned that data alone, and tokenistic efforts towards diversity by law firms, will not solve structural issues.

“It’s not enough to keep running the numbers and then expressing surprise that women continue to leave the workforce at a higher rate than men do. Interrogating this requires more qualitative research.”

In an attempt to shatter the glass ceiling for women and lawyers from diverse backgrounds, the Sydney-based non-profit organisation Diverse Women in Law have established a “wide range” of programs, Heazlewood said, rattling off a series of initiatives to City Hub with a rapid-fire frequency.

“Our mentoring program is very powerful in demonstrating pathways to progression in the profession,” she said.

“We’ve also had written application workshops, podcasts, an interview skills workshop, court observation and barrister sharing programs.”

The organisation has also held seminars that promote intersectionality and address the structural issues women face in the workplace. Currently, a genuine priority for the group is boosting Indigenous membership.

On the barriers First Nations students face, Heazlewood told City Hub, “it concerns us all that these pathways aren’t made obvious to students in the senior years at school.”

Indigenous representation in the state’s legal profession remains low, hovering around 0.9 percent, the Law Society’s annual report has revealed. According to the 2021 census, 3.4 percent of people in NSW identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

A promising future for female lawyers, thanks to COVID

Heazlewood highlighted the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point for female representation in law – one which helped employers reassess workplace practices. The rise of remote working has aided women, who so often still shoulder the mantle of child-rearing.

“I think one of the benefits of having gone through the COVID pandemic is that people now realise that people can work flexibly,” she said. “They can work in different ways and it has no effect on productivity.”

“We now have a voice in the profession. We have strength in numbers. That will be really important for bringing about changes down the track.”