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UK’s top firms fail to increase female equity partner figures

Numerical parity seems impossible while firms are unwilling to contemplate part-time partnership as a rule trather than as an exception. Able women tend to have to opt for an alternative career path to partnership if they want to play an active parental role. The female partnership figures therefore reflect merely the incidence of women who want partnership more than they want either children or day-to-day parenthood. That doesn't leave firms much to crow about. Women also continue to lose out from an androcratic view in partnerships of what constitutes a good lawyer, and a good partner. The quiet influencer is too often drowned out by the arrogant self-publicist. The poor management skills of so many partners makes it bewlidering that this particular penny hasn't yet dropped, and that partner assessment processes haven't been refined to address this. Partners choose the new partners they want; and they choose them in their own image. I am male, by the way, and my own thirty-something version of arrogant self-promotion was somehow judged enough to merit partnership, back in the day. But the best lawyer I know is my wife, who would have made a far better partner than me, if she hadn't decided to become a PSL instead.

13-Sep-2011

9:00 am