Women lawyers face barriers from client demands
Gendered notions of what makes an effective lawyer are preventing women from reaching the top levels of the legal profession, research has found.
Despite progress in terms of both representation and conditions, women still face sexual harassment, bullying and an ingrained lack of respect for carers, senior members of the legal profession said.
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Women have outnumbered men in the legal profession since 2016, yet continue to be underrepresented in law firms’ top echelons.
Senior legal practitioners interviewed for the Sydney University report Designing gender equality into the future of law said client expectations, and firms’ willingness to entertain them, remained a significant barrier to progress.
“It’s a primitive notion which is deeply held that in a stressful situation, you can place faith in a tall, big, strong man with a deep voice to look after your interests and be aggressive and get the result you want,” one senior private practitioner said.
Outdated notions of what a “good” lawyer looks like drove a “vicious cycle” in which women were unable to access the prestigious cases or projects required to move up the ranks.
“I have the sense that there is a feeling amongst the commercial clients and solicitors doing large-scale commercial work that you need to be tough and aggressive and assertive… I think it’s still probably hard for women to break into that,” another interviewee said.
The report also found that tasks that young lawyers would traditionally cut their teeth on were about to be hugely disrupted by digital automation, and female graduates would suffer the most as a result.
The report also pointed to the standard business model of law
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