The rate at which female lawyers are leaving the profession has dropped to an all time low, according to a new report from the Law Society of NSW.

The study Advancement of Women in the Legal Profession  determined attrition rates by assessing how many lawyers in the 1-5 year bracket were still in the profession when they reached the 6-10 year bracket.  The 2013 data was therefore compiled by determining what percentage of the  1-5 year lawyers practising in 2008 were still in the profession five years later, with the attrition rate calculated by corollary.

Attrition rates for both men and women were at ten year lows, while the attrition rate for women was at an all time low of 29.6 percent.  The corresponding figure for men was 26.1 percent. These figures are notably lower than those recorded 10 years ago, where the female attrition rate came close to 40 percent.

The attrition rate for private practice was higher than the profession average, reaching 43.9 percent for women and 34.8 percent for men. In-house corporate practice was a very different picture, with the number of women actually increasing by 7.4 percent and the number of men increasing by 6.6 percent.   However, attrition was in evidence for government lawyers: 6.6 percent for women and 24.2 percent for men. The study noted that it was difficult to draw reliable conclusions from this data because numbers of practitioners were much smaller than those for private practice.

The study also tracked the number of women being promoted to principal or partner roles for the first time. The study concluded that women were being promoted in the same proportion to their representation across private practice generally (41 percent). However, it was also noted that this number was skewed by the inclusion of sole practitioner firms, where women were better represented.