Third of female lawyers harassed at work

One in three female attorneys has been sexually harassed at work, and half have been bullied, according to a global survey that brings law firms into a #Metoo movement that started in Hollywood and has engulfed much of the corporate world.

The International Bar Association survey — based on the online responses of 6,980 attorneys from 135 countries — found sexual harassment in the industry is “common” and bullying is “rife.”

Since the #Metoo movement kicked off two years ago, law firms have been hired to advise corporations on how to handle harassment allegations. IBA president Horacio Bernardes Neto said attorneys needed to get their own hiring and workplace behavior in order because of the risk being called out for hypocrisy.

“These are shocking numbers,” said Christina Blacklaws, president of the Law Society, which represents attorneys in England and Wales. “We really need to eradicate this.” Since many incidents go unreported, it’s possible that the industry “wasn’t aware of the scale and size of the problem,” she said.

It’s the latest episode in a movement that’s seen women around the world speak out about behavior ranging from inappropriate comments to rape and assault, in the wake of allegations of serial predation by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, which he denies.

“I hope the report will be a wake-up call for the profession,” Kieran Pender, the report’s author and an adviser for the IBA, said by phone.

The poll was publicly available online and it’s possible that people who had experienced bullying and harassment were more likely to respond. The IBA said it’s the largest-ever survey on bullying and sexual harassment in the legal industry, was distributed to IBA members and is consistent with other research.

“Around the world, it will be lawyers who are at the forefront of cases that test the efficacy of current laws,” Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister who now chairs the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, said in a foreword to the document.

In three-quarters of all sexual harassment cases, the incident is never reported, according to the report.