Female lawyers ‘fight’ for equal pay
Victoria University law student Isobel Pepper despairs when she looks around her classmates and considers what lies ahead.
‘‘The females are performing just as well across the board as the male students,’’ the second year student says. ‘‘But in a few years time it’s likely to be the boys who are promoted to be partners and to senior roles – and are obviously going to be paid more for doing the same work.’’
Statistics from the Law Society show a significant gender gap in the country’s legal profession.
Charge-out rates are usually set based on what the lawyer is paid and their seniority in a firm. But there are big differences in how men’s and women’s time is valued.
At its worst, female lawyers with five years’ experience are charged out at just 80 per cent of the rate of their male counterparts. Overall, female lawyers’ charge-out rates are 93.3 per cent of men’s no matter how long they have been qualified.
Law Society president Kathryn Beck said it was not clear what was driving the difference but it was concerning.
The society has set up an advisory panel to help firms deal with gender issues and is providing tool kits to help law firms identify and resolve them.
She said 60 per cent of law graduates were women but only 27 per cent of leadership roles were filled by women. ‘‘Law firms seem to be having difficulty retaining senior women. It’s something we have to fix and we’re working to fix it.’’
University of Auckland associate professor in the department of commercial law Alexandra Sims knew one woman who took maternity leave and was then denied the opportunity to progress to become a partner because she had been working for too long at one level.
‘‘If you don’t have children, they think you might. People say everyone is treated the same way but when you see the statistics, it’s not the case.’’
She said the legal profession needed to take responsibility for challenging its unconscious biases. ‘‘It’s not going to solve it by itself. In a few years time it’s likely to be the boys who are promoted to be partners and to senior roles – and are obviously going to be paid more for doing the same work. Isobel Pepper Victoria University law student We’ve had equal numbers of male and female students for 20 or 30 years and that’s not reflected in pay or seniority.’’
Sue Brown, a former partner at DLA Piper, and now running Sue Brown Solutions, agreed a lot of biases were ingrained.
‘‘The profession seems to value traits that are more traditionally male – testosterone, tub-thumping.’’
She said law firms had a challenge in how they recognised staff contribution – traditionally that was done based on the amount of money lawyers were able to amass in their individual accounts from client fees. ‘‘The more female way is more co-operative and looking for a group outcome. How that gets recognised in a law firm structure where the principle measure of success is the size of your pile of fees is a challenge.’’
A Law Foundation study found two-thirds of new female lawyers thought their gender would have a bearing on their career. In big firms, it was almost three-quarters.
One respondent told the study that only 10 per cent of partners at her firm were women and about half were single without families – something that put her off.
Brown said she felt fortunate to have been a partner and an equity partner in major law firms. But she said her career had progressed more slowly because of breaks to have children.
Pepper says she hopes things will change before she gets behind a desk – but she’s not holding out too much hope. ‘‘All we can hope to do is fight the good fight.’’