The Australian private practice fraternity has lagged its government and corporate counterparts in its advancement of women, according to the NSW Law Society.

The Advancement of Women in the Profession Report and Recommendation states that 46 percent of the 24,000 practitioners in NSW last year were female; yet women only account for 23 percent of partners in large law firms with 40 or more partners. “There are significantly fewer senior women than men at the partnership level,” said president of the NSW Law Society and instigator of the report Stuart Westgarth.

Sharon Cook, managing partner at Henry Davis York the only female managing partner of a top 30 law firm in Australia, said the statistics illustrated in the report were woeful. “There has been change, but to my surprise and the surprise of many of us, there has not been much change in relation to the advancement of women in law firms,” said Cook at the official launch this morning. In mid sized firms, those with 11 to 20 partners, only 18 percent are women. In law firms with between five and 10 partners only 17 percent are women. “They are an improvement on five years ago. But given the number of women in practice, these statistics are woeful,” said Cook.

According to the report, barriers for women solicitors are more obvious in private practice than in government or in-house legal practices. More junior women leave private practice in the first five years than junior men. The proportion of women solicitors is greater in the corporate and government sectors than it is in private practice (41 percent, 63 percent and 53 percent respectively in 2010). Key impediments to the advancement of women were the availability of flexible working arrangements and difficulties of returning to work after an extended absence.

With more than 20 years of experience in the legal profession, including three as a managing partner, Cook raised three main reasons for the lack of women in senior roles – choice, attrition and the male prism. “The 24/7 work ethic disadvantages women, both those with and without children … Add to this the stigmatisation of flexibility that is, the predominantly male view that you can't really be serious about your career if you want to work part time, and one wonders how women ever get into senior positions at all,” she said.

Cook challenged law firms to improve the situation: “Law firms have much to learn from the excellent work which has been done at both Westpac and CBA on the advancement of women. We have to recognise that the cultural change that is necessary won't just happen. I have been waiting to see it happen for 30 years in law firms and – other than in my own firm and a few others – it hasn't,” she said.

The only way for firms to truly embrace equality across senior management is for firms to view diversity as a business imperative, states Cook. “There needs to be a vision and goals, a strategy, communication of the vision and goals to the whole firm, execution of the strategy and measurement of the achievement of the vision and goals,” she said. “When I became a partner at HDY in 1997 there were only three female partners. We now have 15 female partners, which amounts to 26 percent of our partnership … And having so many women in senior leadership positions has certainly not harmed the firm's success. Indeed I would argue that it has enhanced it. Since I became managing partner we have had three years of continuous revenue growth – 14.5 percent, 16 percent and five percent in FY2011.” 

To address the imbalance the Law Society has launched a series of tips and recommendations for the profession in the report following a series of round tables and research during the past six months which can be viewed in detail on the society’s website www.lawsociety.com.au/advancementofwomen