It was encouraging to see that since our last roundtable, both law firm partners and GCs have become more aware of their own behaviour and actions or challenging that of others– either consciously or subconsciously—to ensure that women are supported and visible.

• Some GCs have actively been challenging—or were planning to—law firms that staff all-male teams on a transaction.
• Law firm partners had asked colleagues why no women were on certain teams or in presentations or meetings, as it doesn’t always occur to people to think about this.
• Many have consciously challenged the usual practice of women being nominated to lead diversity initiatives and ensured that men were included too.
• Some GCs were being more open with law firms about how they communicate any team members’ flexibility needs and how it might affect the transaction.

While there may be demand from clients for greater senior female representation on transaction teams, law firms need to invest in promotion pipelines to make this happen.

• A lot of business development and networking in law firms still tends to revolve around drinking and sports. Sometimes it is hard for introverted female junior associates to be noticed. What can be done to encourage law firms to think differently about BD and provide female associates with more access to clients?
• Firms only tend to think about promoting women or making networking events more attractive to women when female associates go in-house (often because they have had children and are looking for a better work-life balance).
• Firms should invest in coaching their female associates, and—equally as important—for their line managers to also be involved in the process so that they can play an active supporting role in any follow up needed.
• Senior partners should recognise and sponsor women for opportunities and deals so that the burden does not entirely fall on the associate to push herself forward. Many women tend to not put themselves forward to the same extent as male colleagues and sometimes they need to be supported, encouraged—and pushed—to progress into senior roles.
• GCs can also help by giving direct and visible feedback to their retained law firms that they should promote certain female team members. One partner noted that they had often received unsolicited emails from clients when it is clear that the male associate had asked the client to put a word in for them – but had never received similar requests from female associates.
• GCs can also be more assertive when it comes to talking to their law firms about their investment into their pipeline of female high performers.
• Firms can invest in reverse mentoring (quite common in corporates) where seniors and juniors mutually benefit from mentoring. This is effective where the more junior female associates help the partners with a fresh perspective, enabling the partners to be better and more inclusive leaders. It goes without saying that it also creates working relationships that wouldn’t have been formed but for the reverse mentoring – which can be ideal from a sponsorship perspective.
• Firms can learn from corporates, that tend to be ahead of the curve when it comes to rewarding and promoting women as they have a higher investment in Board-driven ESG. Private equity and investment banks have started to take more notice since their investors are increasingly ESG-driven, and others are signing up to mindful business charters with pledges to increase diversity across the board.

There is generally a fundamental lack of communication between law firms and GCs; many GCs have “survived” the law firm model and are not willing to challenge it!

• GCs are often reticent about challenging law firms about the lack of females on a deal team and feel that some firms are just not open to receiving feedback of this kind.
• Law firms are so governed by the billable hour and determined not to let service levels drop or lose work to another firm – and this means that the associates sometimes suffer as a result. This is a particular issue for firms when it comes to flexible working requests (mainly from) women and also hinders building resilience in transactional teams, especially as the business model makes it difficult to write off handover time. It was noted by a law firm partner that more pressure should be put on law firms in this respect as things won’t change drastically for the better until the business model does.
• Firms and GCs should be honest and open with each other about all relationship matters so it makes discussing diversity and flexibility easier. Some firms do have client listening programmes which encourage honest feedback but do not tend to enhance the personal relationship between firm and client.
• Clients often ask for diversity and inclusion statistics as part of the pitch process but then do not tend to regularly review it. Many have had to devise their own diversity feedback questionnaires as there is no industry standard.

What’s next?