Twenty-one complaints in two years. Less than one per month. That's the number of sexual harassment or misconduct allegations reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) between October 2015 and October 2017.

It's not a huge figure, especially considering Legal Week's survey last year which found that nearly two thirds of respondents had been sexually harassed while at work.

But then Harvey Weinstein happened – followed by the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women around the world to expose patterns of sexual harassment.

Seven months later, the winds behind the movement have shaken – but not battered – the top levels of the legal industry in both the US and the UK.

"It's only a matter of time before it catches up to the legal profession," said Stanford Law School professor Deborah Rhode.

In the UK, that catching up may already have begun. Since January, three upper-echelon lawyers have been directly named or obliquely identified in connection to inappropriate sexual conduct, with all three being forced out of their firms. And the two in England have spurred  investigations by the SRA, which also recently warned law firms not to use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to cover up sexual harassment allegations.

On the other side of the Atlantic, female lawyers are becoming increasingly bold about calling out law firms on gender imbalances in compensation, a fact demonstrated by recent lawsuits filed against Morrison & Foerster, Proskauer Rose and others. And in very different situations, women's allegations have even brought down powerful lawyers, including disgraced former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Latham & Watkins chairman and managing partner Bill Voge.

But the SRA's very existence exposes a key distinction between the legal professions in the US and the UK – unlike in the US, a central authority exists in England and Wales to both track and act on allegations of sexual misconduct in the legal profession.

Fielding complaints, changing the culture?

The SRA's regulatory authority is a function of the distinction between barristers and solicitors in the UK. Law firms are not required to submit to the authority of the SRA, but most choose to do so. In part, the large-scale decision to opt in is a function of the deregulation of the legal industry in the UK, where laypeople can perform a wide range of legal services short of appearing in court.

Compare that to the US, where the American Bar Association (ABA) represents lawyers nationally but has no power to regulate them. It must rely on promulgating model rules and urging state-level regulatory bodies to adopt them.

"A better comparison would be the SRA versus the state supreme courts, which have the ultimate responsibility for imposing regulations," said Laurel Terry, a professor at Penn State's Dickinson Law School. "What [the ABA has] is expertise, and they hope to be a model that the state Supreme Courts will follow."

What the SRA is trying to do is change the culture of the legal profession

The ABA model rules for misconduct do include a provision forbidding any harassment or discrimination based on sex, among a number of other protected categories. But 11 states have declined to incorporate that particular harassment clause in their rules. Meanwhile, Iowa stands out for rules that are especially proactive on the subject, explicitly barring lawyers from engaging "in sexual harassment or other unlawful discrimination in the practice of law or knowingly permit[ting] staff or agents subject to the lawyer's direction and control to do so."

The distinction between the two bodies is not limited to their differing authority. It is also demonstrated by the nature of their rules. According to Western Michigan University Cooley Law School professor Victoria Vuletich, the ABA rules are essentially prescriptive in nature, outlining what lawyers must do or cannot do.

"They're couched in the language of logic; they're couched in language of reason," she said.

The SRA, meanwhile, follows an 'outcome-based' regulation model, with rules rooted in values-based language. "Instead of saying a solicitor must charge a 'reasonable fee', they'll say a solicitor must charge a 'fair fee'," Vuletich added.

Underpinning the organisation's lengthy code of conduct is a list of 10 core principles that all members must follow. At least three of them gesture toward sexual misconduct: demands that all individuals under its purview "uphold the rule of law and the proper administration of justice", "act with integrity", and "behave in a way that maintains the trust the public places in you and in the provision of legal services".

But what makes the SRA truly distinct from the ABA is that its code obligates mandatory reporting for violations and demands that regulated organisations name a compliance officer for ensuring the rules are followed.

"What the SRA is trying to do is change the culture of the legal profession," Vuletich said.

Earlier this year, after the #MeToo movement helped reveal how sexual predators used NDAs to bury allegations against them, the SRA released a warning notice, saying that using such agreements as a way to discourage the reporting of misconduct violated several principles as well as certain specific "outcomes".

At almost the exact same time, the ABA released its own updated manual for combating sexual harassment in the legal industry. And that new manual outlines sample policies that legal organisations can use in drafting their own policies to prohibit sexual harassment, describes key elements of what a comprehensive policy against sexual harassment should include, and provides guidelines for complaint channels and reporting procedures. But notably, there is nothing binding about its conclusions. It also says nothing about NDAs.

According to Terry, any such message would be likely to come from the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which has a very deliberative process for issuing new opinions.

"I wouldn't expect to see anything for quite a while," she said.

The power of the market

The UK is also outpacing the US through regulations which cast a shadow that reaches beyond the legal industry – the gender pay gap reporting requirements. All UK businesses with 250 employees or more must report the difference in pay between men and women whose jobs are based in the country. And some observers believe those new requirements could fuel a movement toward greater accountability in the UK's legal industry.

"It's possible that it contributes to a climate in which people are talking about gender disparities and gender equity, and in the context of that conversation, particularly in light of the #MeToo movement, you're likely to have more discussion of conduct issues as well as pay issues," Terry said.

An equivalent piece of legislation in the US is unlikely to make an appearance in the near term, at least on a nationwide basis. But some say the current free-flowing discussion about continuing gender imbalances in the workplace, combined with market pressure, could provide a new avenue for change.

A profession that prides itself as the upholder of equal justice has done a poor job of policing gender and racial diversity in its own ranks

"In a sense, what the #MeToo movement has unleashed is a real sense of power and voice and leverage among women, who traditionally felt they had nowhere to go," Rhode said. "Now social media allows women to bypass an unresponsive legal system."

And other powerful institutions, such as elite law schools, are latching on to some of these concerns and using their voice to exert pressure. Last week, 13 top US law schools announced that they were requiring law firms that interview on campus to complete a survey and openly disclose whether they will require summer associates to sign arbitration provisions and other related NDAs. This move came in the wake of a Twitter firestorm over a mandatory arbitration provision and NDA in a Munger Tolles & Olson summer associate employment contract earlier this year.

In that context, a demand among law students for information about salary disparities could gain traction.

"If the elite law schools got together and said that they wanted this information about nondisclosure agreements… it seems that the large law firms would respond more quickly if the associates they want to woo in the talent war demanded the same information that's being made available in England and Wales," Terry said.

The spillover effects of the EU's move toward greater data privacy through the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation provides a useful analogy. While similar legislation in the US is a distant prospect, social media companies such as Facebook and Google have been implementing their own privacy tools that also apply to US users, responding in part to bad publicity and market pressures.

"You may have the same thing going on with the UK gender pay gap regulations," Terry said.

At a wider level, the US legal profession as a whole might be well served by looking beyond its borders for better ways of supporting women, especially as top firms continue to be taken to court over allegations of gender discrimination, legal experts say.

"It is worth noting that a profession that prides itself on the rule of law and the upholder of equal justice has done a relatively poor job of policing gender and racial diversity in its own ranks," Rhode said. "That should prompt us to look at our own practices and look at other countries that seem to be getting better at promoting equity at upper professional levels."