Women: Female law partners almost double

THE feminisation of the legal profession has accelerated, with the current intake of partners containing almost twice as many women as last year.

Partnership ranks at the leading legal firms are still almost 80 per cent male, but that dominance is being challenged on every measure covered by The Australian’s survey of the leading firms.

The latest intake of 204 new partners is 33.3 per cent female, compared with 21 per cent at this time last year. That is the equivalent of 68 new female partners as opposed to just 37 for the same period last year.

The overall intake of partners is 15.9 per cent larger than last year, but the intake of female partners is 83.8 per cent larger. After taking account of these appointments, the number of female partners at leading firms has grown more than twice as fast as the partnership pool – up by 6.9 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively.

On the key measure of equity partnerships, female lawyers have defied a shakeout that has reduced the number of men with equity in their firms.

The number of female equity partners at the leading firms has grown by 2.4 per cent since this time last year, while the overall number of equity partnerships at these firms declined by 1.4 per cent.

These changes have come to light in The Australian’s end of financial year survey of the nation’s 36 leading firms.

These firms consist of a cross-section of the profession ranging from the biggest practices to some of the smallest.

The growing number of women being appointed to the firms’ top ranks comes soon after separate research highlighted the extent of demographic change within the legal profession.

Research published in these pages last month revealed that women now make up 46 per cent of the nation’s solicitors.

In some states, women are the clear majority of all solicitors under the age of 40. That suggests female lawyers might be the main beneficiaries of an employment boom that is taking place at the leading firms.

In the past six months, legal employment at the leading firms has grown by 6.4 per cent – or the equivalent of 551 new full-time positions.

On partnerships, the firms with the highest proportion of female equity partners are both mid-sized practices: Gilbert + Tobin, on 33.9 per cent, and Holding Redlich on 25.6 per cent.

Holding Redlich human resources director Catherine Whitehead said her firm offered flexible working arrangements and up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave for the primary carer.

Among the big national firms, Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Freehills have continued their struggle over which firm has the best performance when it comes to female equity partners.

In percentage terms, Mallesons leads the other big firms with 38 female equity partners, or 22.3 per cent of the total.

Freehills is just behind on 21.8 per cent, but Freehills also has the single largest cohort of female equity partners — 43 out of a total of 197 equity partners.

While Freehills has recently appointed its latest intake of partners, Mallesons’ chief executive partner, Robert Milliner, said his firm did not appoint new partners until December.

Freehills managing partner Gavin Bell said his firm’s performance was a result of initiatives that had been put in place after the firm accepted 10 years ago that gender was an issue in the legal services industry.

‘It has been a slow change because you are starting with partnerships that have such large proportions of men historically,” Mr Bell said.

Demographic changes meant men now made up a higher proportion of those partners who were retiring, while the proportion of women among newly appointed partners was growing.

“Over time, that will change the numbers — and you will be seeing an element of that not just in our firm but across all firms,” Mr Bell said.

He said some idea of the scale of demographic change could be gauged by the fact that the first female partner of a major Australian law firm was Helen Brown, who became a partner at Freehills in the 1970s.

Mr Bell expected that as more male partners retired, greater numbers of women would join the top ranks. The firm’s senior associates — the pool from which partners are selected — is 58 per cent female.

At Mallesons, Mr Milliner said his firm’s performance in appointing female partners was entirely based on merit.

“We don’t set quotas and our female partners do not support that,” he said. “We are a meritocracy and we are trying to ensure that within that framework we have appropriate diversity and that we bring through talented people.”

As at Freehills, Mallesons offers workplace flexibility including up to 18 weeks’ paid parental leave.

He said the firm had undertaken several initiatives aimed at convincing female lawyers that having children would not prejudice their chances of promotion to partnership. “In the past, people might have thought it was one or the other,” Mr Milliner said.