Law’s gender imbalance
Law firms have never much liked discussing salaries. Any pay rise or bonus I received in my early years as a solicitor was accompanied by a stern warning that pay information was confidential and must not be shared with my colleagues. It never crossed my mind that the reason for the secrecy could be because male solicitors were being paid more, even though three of the law firms I worked for had zero female equity partners. I wasn’t even that concerned about the lack of female partners. The way I looked at it was that although there was inequality at the top right now, with as many women as men studying law and becoming solicitors, this would inevitably change over time. Thirty years on, has my belief in change over time proved well founded? Up to a point.
The latest diversity data collected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority shows that, as at August 2017, women made up 48% of all lawyers in law firms. However, at partner level, only 29% of partners in the larger firms (50 or more partners) were women. This figure rose to 37% in mid-size firms.
On International Women’s Day last month, Law Society vicepresident Christina Blacklaws released the findings of the largest international survey conducted on women in law. It showed that while 74% of men thought there had been progress in gender equality over the past five years, only 48% of women agreed.
One in 10 responding thought unconscious bias was the most commonly perceived barrier to progression and nearly half (49%) of respondents said an unacceptable work/life balance was demanded to reach senior levels.
The gender pay reporting of the larger law firms confirms that the pace of change in the legal sector is slow. Compulsory gender pay reporting was announced by then Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2015 as part of his commitment to closing the gender pay gap “in a generation.”
Employers with more than 250 employees were required for the first time to report their gender pay gap on or before April 4, 2018.
An analysis by Legal Cheek of 59 City of London firms that filed their data shows mean gender pay gaps of 2.3%-39.1% and median gender pay gaps of 4.8%-68.2%. The average pay gap (mean) for these firms was 21.1%, while the average pay gap (median) was 30.7%.
A number of law firms point out that the gender pay gap is as large as it is because support staff on lower rates of pay, are, in the vast majority, female. However, law firms’ gender pay reporting has drawn criticism because most have not reported their partners’ earnings, as they are classed as self-employed and therefore it is not compulsory to report their data.
The big four professional services firms – KMPG, EY, PWC and Deloitte – revised their data to incorporate partners. Clifford Chance was the first magic circle law firm to include partners in their gender pay reporting. The inclusion of partners changed Clifford Chance’s mean pay gap from 20.3% to a whopping 66.3%, with a pay gap in the partnership alone of 27.3%.
But the City of London is different to Wales. To put that difference in context, Baker McKenzie filed their annual accounts for 2016-17 two days after the deadline for gender pay gap reporting. Their highestpaid UK partner received £2.58m that year. That would represent a decent turnover figure for the whole of some of the small to mediumsized law firms in Wales.
The gender pay gaps reported by the law firms in Wales ranked by the Legal 500 are as set out below:
■ Blake Morgan: mean 26.1%, median 32.8%
■ Eversheds: mean 23.2%, median 25.4%
■ Geldards: mean 29.7%, median 43.2%
■ Hugh James: mean 13.8%, median 8.7%
■ Bethan Darwin is a partner with law firm Thompson Darwin.