Julia Noble was an ambitious young female lawyer in the 1990s. City law was booming and she joined Allen & Overy with her sights set for the top. But pretty soon it was clear who at the top was wearing the trousers at the time – and it was not the female staff.

Through the next 17 years, she hit one glass ceiling after another as she became a mother of three, attempted a work-life balance that was frowned on at the time, went from full-time to part-time, and switched from private practice to in-house. Finally, 12 years ago, she decided enough was enough and left the law to pursue her passion for art, taking up a foundation course followed by a full degree.

"I do wonder what I'd be doing now if I had gone into the legal profession 15 years later than when I did – I do think it would be different," she says. Referring to her time as a trainee, she adds: "Back then, we weren't even allowed to wear trousers."

Julia Noble

It was obvious on return from her second stint of maternity leave around 1998 that at the time, motherhood was a serious career breaker.

"Back then, we weren't even allowed to wear trousers"

On her return, she found some of her colleagues had left the firm, leading her to ask to work four days a week. And she got it.

"There were no other fee-earners in my department working part-time and I think that was the case in other departments too. It was therefore quite forward-thinking of the partners that I worked for at the time.

"But the problem was that, at that time, as soon as I was working part-time, no one would even consider me as a candidate for partnership. I could see my peers progress and I knew that the partnership option was not available to me."

It was the era of office face-time and Noble recalls that her colleagues' attitudes towards her leaving the office at 6pm to work from home and care for her children were not that supportive. She says they found it hard to believe that she continued to work after physically leaving the office.

"I do recall that in one assessment I was told that there was a perception among others in the office that I was not pulling my weight in my team. I challenged this: I asked if there were any specific incidents but there weren't. Because perceptions and actual incidents are completely separate things."

Noble says she felt a great sense of responsibility to set an example for other women that it could be done – at least to the extent that the glass ceiling permitted.

"As soon as I was working part-time, no one would even consider me as a candidate for partnership"

After returning from her third maternity leave in 2001, she found a large number of her colleagues had progressed up the career ladder. Frustrated at her limited prospects in private practice as the firm approached its next promotion round, Noble left to go in-house at one of her banking clients and joined them permanently a year later.

For a mother-of-three seeking a career ladder, this proved no better. Although she led the team for several years, she was told this could not be a permanent leadership position because she worked part-time.

"Again I felt I had hit a glass ceiling, and after five years at the bank I decided to leave.

"I then went back to A&O for a while as a consultant doing professional support work. But working three short days meant that I hardly got to experience the social element of the job," she says.

Noble quit the job and went to study art.

"I just thought: life is too short, and it was time for me to do other things," she says. 

Julia Noble's artwork

Nowadays, A&O is a different place. Like many firms, it has a raft of initiatives aimed at female progression, such as shared parental leave and flexible-working policies. The firm states that working part-time does not prevent promotion to partnership.

But back in her time, Noble believes that one of the key problems was the perception that clients would disapprove of their legal advisers working part-time. However, having been on the other side of the table as a client, she saw first-hand that this wasn't the case, and that clients would not hold this against their law firms.

She feels this misperception blights the industry, and some law firms still believe that clients would shun them for encouraging flexible working. She says that people tend to forget that a good number of working people are in the same boat; clients are often themselves working mothers and fathers, and are united in the fight to allow greater working freedom for parents.

Her husband Ray Berg continued in the legal profession. He joined Osborne Clarke in 2001 and is now managing partner.

Noble says she noticed a change in Berg's freedoms as a father when he moved to Osborne Clarke. She says the firm's "general ethos" is better for working parents, and believes they recognise that lawyers do have a life beyond work.

"There's so much female talent out there that is still getting lost"

She believes there have been significant improvements made by law firms. The technology has improved substantially, allowing home working to be much more efficient and enabling more lawyers to work flexibly and take up part-time positions. There are also a number of schemes in place to enable women to progress up the career ladder even while juggling parenthood.

But Noble says there are still too few female partners, and there are many issues on diversity that we still need to overcome: "There's so much female talent out there that is still getting lost."