Can You Be a Diligent Parent And an Equity Partner?

Gender diversity progress at the equity partnership level has ground to a halt and law firms' long-term targets are not working. Hmmm, it's almost as if the system discriminates against primary carers.

I'm Paul Hodkinson, Editor-In-Chief of Law.com International, bringing you this week's edition of The Global Lawyer.

So many who have read the powerful account of Megan Gray—the high-flying lawyer whose career was radically altered when she had a baby—have said the same thing: stories like hers are all too common.

Gray was performing very well at a large international law firm but asked for a more flexible work arrangement so she could be present with her baby and “do the very real work of motherhood”, she wrote last week.

Her firm said no. One partner even explained she would have “no value” to the firm if she worked 9am-5pm. Unsurprisingly, she left.

Her story is not unique. Others speak privately of how their requests for flexible working were denied or how they were treated differently as a result of having them accepted.

It is a common challenge facing all parents in Big Law. One recruiter told me about a father who was told by his large international law firm that if he took parental leave his promotion to equity partner would be delayed.

But given that a disproportionate amount of child-rearing still falls on women, that is where the greatest effect is seen. A department head at a major firm told me there are plenty of mothers working part-time at his firm, but none of them is in the equity tier. In almost all the main transactional practice areas, the equity partners are overwhelmingly men.

The senior mothers that do work in those departments frequently have an arrangement where their partner acts as the primary caregiver or they rely on nannies. So many nannies. One journalist said he once asked a prominent female partner how she balanced the responsibilities of her job with looking after her two young children and she said she had two nannies on rotation. But as one woman commented last week in response to the idea of her using a nanny: “Sometimes the solution is to make work less sh*t. Not our lives more sh*t to accommodate work.”

It has always been this way. The time-for-money business model of corporate law firms, the market and competitors forces an intense working environment. And long hours are simply not conducive to lots of quality time with family.

But there had been hopes things were slowly changing.

Unfortunately, that change has virtually stopped...

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