What are law firms doing to ensure more women rise to their senior ranks? Helen Mooney talks to several firms that have signed up to a new programme designed to tackle female under-representation

The under-representation of women at the top of corporate Britain is no secret and continues to hit the headlines. Numerous reports – including the Davies Report and the Women on Boards: Six-Month Monitoring Report, both of which were released in 2011 – have highlighted what now seems to be an age-old problem: not enough women make it to the top.

So what are law firms doing to address the issue and ensure that more of their female staff – who often number more than 50% at junior level – stay on and climb the career ladder to partnership (where, in many cases, their numbers drop back to around 20%, at best)?

Five UK law firms are trying to tackle their senior female retention problem through a more entrepreneurial route. DLA Piper, Squire Sanders, Pinsent Masons, Walker Morris and Eversheds have all signed up to a new programme: An Inspirational Journey.

The brainchild of the Women's Business Forum (WBF) founder Heather Jackson, the programme is a group of four initiatives, sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland, that aim to increase the number of women working at the senior corporate level.

Jackson says the initiatives – the Two Percent Club, the Pearls, the 150 Programme and the WBF – aim to use different routes to help companies "identify, develop and grow a large talent pool of women who have the potential to be leaders in the future". 

She explains: "This is no longer an equality issue, but a business issue and one that can be rectified by fixing the leaking female talent pipeline within organisations. 

"There is a solution for the UK on this agenda that does not require quotas, but collaboration of organisations, their leaders and their women – and one that will allow the UK to lead the world on the issue."

The programme works with women across all sectors of the UK and attempts to build their confidence and self-belief, help them better recognise capabilities and skills, and help them to develop contacts and network effectively.

Jackson explains that the four initiatives are set up to increase the participation of women working across the whole corporate hierarchy: "The underlying problem resulting in the under-representation of women on boards lies so much deeper within organisations than merely the board. Just adding more women onto board numbers is papering over a crack.

"What is needed is a business-led solution, underwritten by a meritocracy that doesn't saturate boardrooms with women, but encourages them to realise their potential and allow companies the opportunity to mend the leaks identified by Davies in the leaking pipeline of talented women."

Fixing the pipeline

New research commissioned by recruitment consultants Alexander Mann Solutions, and women in business support group everywoman, recently revealed that UK business could potentially benefit by £5bn a year if companies unblocked the talent pipeline for their 500,000 female middle managers.

Their subsequent report – Focus on the Pipeline: Engaging the full potential of female middle managers – highlights a high level of frustration caused by a lack of opportunity and a lack of career path clarity that female talent is experiencing at middle management level. 

The survey found the aspects of work that female middle managers were least satisfied with were the lack of opportunities (48%), the likelihood of progression (47%) and the clarity of career path (40%). Only 11% of female middle managers described themselves as "extremely satisfied" in their job.

Rosaleen Blair, founder and chief executive of Alexander Mann, says: "It's apparent that the ambition of female middle managers is not being channelled effectively, which will have a real impact on engagement levels. We know that higher levels of employee engagement result in greater productivity, improving companies' operating performance by almost 20%."

Co-founder of everywoman Karen Gill adds: "While diversity is much more front of mind than several years ago, some companies still don't know where to start to unlock the productivity of their female middle managers. The good news is there are practical steps companies can take to improve their female talent pipeline."

'Lift as we climb'

So what are law firms – with their notoriously long hours and inflexible working conditions – doing to address the problem? Allison Page, a Leeds-based partner at DLA, chairs the Two Percent Club in Yorkshire.  

She says: "We need to encourage our female talent pool to stay in the firm and one way we can do this is to give them a forum to meet other aspiring women in business."

Like the other law firms involved in the programme, many of DLA's female senior associates are involved in the Pearls initiative. 

"This is about giving women at senior associate level networking opportunities with women in other corporate institutions," Page explains. 

"They get important training and coaching for their careers, which they are expected to feed back to the 'Gems' (those women at a more junior level) so that we 'lift as we climb'. 

"We need these women to make decisions and choices, often related to childcare and flexible working, but to see their career as a marathon, not a sprint."

One such woman is Kirstie Allerton, a DLA senior associate also based in Leeds, and single mother to two young children. She could easily have been one of those women who leave the talent pool midway through their career. However, Allerton is in the DLA partner pipeline and part of the Pearls initiative. 

"I jumped at the chance to be involved. The networking potential is great and the people you meet and listen to are inspirational," she says. 

"It is harder for women to progress in their careers, especially in terms of childcare. You have to have the right support around you."

Allerton, who employs a full-time nanny and works four days a week, says that to make it work, she has "an intricate level of organisation and support. I have tried to make it work as well to show other women underneath me that they can, too."

One thing the Pearls initiative does is place a focus on both networking and confidence building to help women recognise the skills they have and to better believe in themselves. Allerton explains that the majority of networking events she attends in her sector of real estate finance are largely male dominated. 

"During the Pearls networking events, we talk about how to tackle [other male-dominated networking events] and how to get the best out of them. One of the challenges is to not think of yourself as any different to the men. We are equal to them.

"It is about being more confident, but at the same time not trying to be a man – some women do that and it often works against them. It's just about thinking that you are the best person for the job." 

jane-haxby-squire-sanders-webJane Haxby (pictured), managing partner of Squire Sanders' Manchester office, is also a member of the Two Percent Club. She says leading by example "really does matter".

"In some ways, we impose ceilings on ourselves and we need to see others doing it and focus on what we can do rather than what we can't.

"As law firms, we need to address this internally as well. There is a huge female intake, but that drops off at senior associate level. Some of this is about training and recognising how women describe themselves, but we also need men to understand that this is a business issue."

She adds: "Ideally, what we would all want is a complete meritocracy and we are making good strides. But I want to see more women leading practice groups, with roles on the board, and as office managers."

Helen Ridge, partner and head of Pinsents' Manchester office, agrees: "Women need to be able to have role models they can see and they need to have effective mentoring to get advice on work/life balance."

She says law firms also need to examine whether there exists what she calls a "subconscious bias" in their firm so that men are promoted ahead of women. "Although we do have a fairly good percentage – with around 20% of women in the firm at senior levels – with 50% coming into the business at a junior level, there must be more we can do to retain more of them."

In law firms, as in the rest of the corporate world, the gender balance is very slowly being redressed. But there is still a long way to go and the initiatives that are on offer through An Inspirational Journey will help advance the cause. 

As one lawyer puts it: "It's not about shopping or lipstick evenings or Sex and the City days out, but real networking, meeting other women and talking about the issues facing them, facing businesses, and what we can do to alter the status quo."