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Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 20 No. 6 November 2013 doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2012.00610.x

Lawyers’ Professional Careers: Increasing Women’s Inclusion in the Partnership of Law Firms Ashly H. Pinnington* and Jörgen Sandberg Despite a huge increase in the number of women lawyers employed in professional service firms (PSFs) over the last four decades, the proportion of women at partnership level has changed at a much slower rate. This article investigates men’s and women’s understandings of women’s careers and promotion to equity partner. The findings show that one reason why few women advance to equity partner level is that both men and women understand this role as requiring them to privilege work considerations over family. We recommend that PSF researchers and practitioners reflect more on the management of diversity and alternative work arrangements and organization. Keywords: inclusion, promotion, glass ceiling

Introduction

W

omen lawyers in many countries have greater access to employment in law firms than in the past. In 1971 only 3 per cent of US lawyers were women (Hull and Nelson, 2000, p. 230), which is the same as in 1919 for the Law Society of England and Wales (Abel, 1988, p. 36). Since the 1970s, in North America, Europe and Australasia the proportion of female lawyers employed in private practice has grown (Nicolson, 2005) and for over a decade women have constituted more than 50 per cent of new entrants to these countries’ legal professions. As Wilkins (2007, p. 41) has observed: ‘Women now comprise more than 15 per cent of all general counsel at Fortune 500 companies, and ... almost a third of all lawyers employed in corporate legal departments’. With the growth in the number of employed women lawyers and the increasing representation of women in the professional service firms (PSFs) one might expect a similar increase of women at the partnership level. This however, is not the case. In the USA 60 per cent of attorneys (lawyers) are women but only about 15–17 per cent of equity partners are women (for example, Project for Attorney Retention, 2011). In Australia more women than men have been graduating from law schools for over two decades, but still only 13–15 per cent of women lawyers are equity partners (Victorian Women Lawyers, 2011, p. 3). It is important therefore to consider the question why such a high proportion of men remain equity partners despite the increase of women lawyers in PSFs. An answer to that question is also likely to help us to address the equally intriguing question of how long the disproportionate representation of men lawyers working as equity partners in PSFs will continue. While what follows are not hard and fast distinctions, the literature on women lawyers and diversity can be usefully subdivided into offering three types of explanation for the disproportionate representation of men at equity partner level: micro and macro processes of social reproduction,

Address for correspondence: *Faculty of Business, British University in Dubai, P.O. Box 345015 Dubai, United Arab Emirates; e-mail: [email protected]

© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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organizational restructuring in the professions, and gender discrimination in society. One stream of research argues that inequity persists due to processes of social reproduction of gendered social stratification, hierarchical segmentation and gender differences in occupational power, human capital rewards and career advancement (Bolton and Muzio, 2008; Dinovitzer and Garth, 2007; Dixon and Seron, 1995; Hull and Nelson, 2000; Kay and Hagan, 1995, 1998; Muzio and Bolton, 2006; Muzio et al., 2008). Another group of studies suggests that inequity is related to processes of organizational restructuring in traditional professions that favours men, and occurs in a context where the top elite of equity partners is becoming a smaller proportion of the total number of lawyers (for example, Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Gorman, 1999, 2006; Galanter and Henderson, 2008). A third stream of research claims that this inequity results from fundamental problems of gender discrimination in society, labour markets, professions and organizations (for example, Reskin and Ross, 1992; Leicht and Fennell, 2001, pp. 86–7; Sommerlad, 2002, 2008). While all these research streams provide important explanations, a noticeable gap in the literature on gender is the lack of rich description and theoretical explanation of how men and women professionals collaboratively construct the limited inclusion of women. In particular, few studies have investigated to what extent men’s and women’s different understandings of their careers may combine to influence women’s career trajectories and their potential to reach equity partner. The aim of this study on lawyers was (a) to investigate and compare men’s and women’s understandings of their professional careers and (b) to explore the extent to which those understandings affect men’s and women’s careers. Law firms, known as PSFs, are one form of professional organization. Our study of gender diversity in professional careers is relevant to PSFs operating in different sectors including law, accounting, architecture, engineering, consulting and advertising. It also has implications for professional organizations that are technology developers such as biotechnology and research and development laboratories (Von Nordenflycht, 2010) and pluralistic organizations (Lawrence et al., 2012) notably universities. These professional organizations all have at their core professionalized workers and are characterized by comparatively complex authority structures to accommodate professional and commercial systems, controls and incentives. The article is structured as follows. In the next section we review issues of gender exclusion and inclusion at the top of the PSF. Next, we consider women lawyers’ professional careers, analysing how the work–family conflict is under-acknowledged in organizational practice and in theories of the PSF. Thereafter, we present the results of our two interview studies and our interpretation of the participants’ accounts of professional careers. Finally, we discuss how women may become more equitably included in PSFs and be better represented at equity partner level.

Women’s inclusion (and exclusion) in the partnership of the firm The probability of promotion to partner is higher for men than it is for women (Hull and Nelson, 2000; Heinz, Nelson, Sandefur and Laumann, 2005). Organizational theories have shown that the microand macro processes of promotion to partner are based on male-dominated principles (Whitmarsh et al., 2007) in aristocratic elitism (for example, Lee, 1992) organization power (for example, Nelson, 1988), collegial meritocracy (Greenwood et al., 1990), career tournaments (Galanter and Palay, 1991; Morris and Pinnington, 1998), a competitive business strategy (Cooper et al., 1996) or status and image (Galanter and Roberts, 2008). Such principles are not exclusively male and they are particularly salient for groups of women whose work behaviour is consistent with the work-centred ideal-type of professional, a concept which Hakim (2006) uses to refer to women who prioritize their work rather than pursue adaptive or home-centred approaches. It has been suggested that the work-centred ideal does not recognize cultural, professional and organizational differences and ignores individual choices made by workers and their families (Hakim, 2008, p. 134). Wallace and Kay (2008) call for a research agenda that addresses these dimensions, and Wallace (1995, 1999) has consistently maintained that lawyers are motivated by professionalism and professional career advancement, arguing that considerations of collegiality, career opportunity and work autonomy (individual discretion and control) are similarly motivating for men and women.


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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Several recent PSF theories addressing organizational restructuring in the professions avoid saying that much about promotion opportunities. Galanter and Henderson’s (2008) use the concept of the elastic tournament to capture the situation in large global law firms in which opportunities for promotion to a partnership are becoming more limited, since firms employ a greater number of associates below the top equity core and retain a small elite group for their major key clients. The authors assert that it will be harder for women to obtain coveted work assignments, training and promotion whenever they have ‘disproportionate family responsibilities’ (p. 1919). These limited opportunities for promotion to partner are possibly an echo of the superpartners and New York system of earlier decades (Nelson, 1988, p. 9). A slightly more optimistic argument on restructuring is made by Ackroyd and Muzio (2007). They portray the law firm as a reconstructed firm based on new mechanisms of internal closure, with an elongated organizational hierarchy and an emerging gendered division of labour. Ackroyd and Muzio (2007) predict that law firm workforces are likely to be composed of more diverse employees, but that the PSF is likely to subordinate female professionals to male patterns of work and career. The literature on gender discrimination offers additional explanations why men lawyers are disproportionately represented among equity partners in PSFs. According to Leicht and Fennell (2001, pp. 86–7) such inequity can be explained as gender queuing, a labour market process whereby employers expect women to occupy lower status jobs and defer to men’s career advancement regardless of their human capital worth to the firm (Reskin and Ross, 1992). This kind of inequity is not confined to PSFs but continues to occur in entrepreneurial, corporate business and consultancy professions (for example, Gastelaars and Van Wijk, 2009). Ely (1995) argues that the glass ceiling is based on unequal gender representation and that gender constructs are more problematic in any client and service provider firms with relatively low proportions of women employees. Studies of gender diversity reveal a variety of dynamic employment patterns across countries and labour markets, which are influenced by a range of societal, economic and cultural factors (Grimshaw et al., 2011; Yerkes, 2010). This article concentrates on women lawyers, since law firms share with many other professional groups a specific set of characteristics, including increasing levels of access for women to full-time employment combined with higher levels of (university) education and postgraduate training. Many women express interest in part-time and flexible forms of working to meet family commitments and the problem of the glass ceiling in the PSF (Kumra and Vinnicombe, 2008) is possibly more tractable than in others. It should be easier to resolve over time than other problems of diversity management in the public and private sectors. For example, the limited inclusion of women in military combat roles is justified using societal, professional and organizational ideas of gender difference that give rise to strong political and cultural concerns when challenged (Woodward and Winter, 2006).

Women lawyers’ professional careers are under-acknowledged in theories of the PSF A limitation of mainstream theoretical models of the PSF such as the P2 form (Greenwood et al., 1990) and the managed professional business (MPB) (Cooper et al., 1996) is that they do not say much directly about society or gender and, consequently, do not offer long-term perspectives on new forms of organizing work and family (Conaghan and Rittich, 2005). The lack of emphasis in the P2 form and MPB on diversity, gender and family relates to the intent of these models. Their purpose was to concentrate on the special features of the professional organizational form. The traditional model of partnership governance and ownership by a group of professionals in P2 form was seen to be changing towards a different interpretive scheme (MPB) that was influenced more forcefully by managerial ideas of effectiveness and efficiency. Other recent theories on and frameworks of PSFs encourage us to be circumspect about transformational change in career and promotion systems (for example, Malhotra and Morris, 2009; Malhotra et al., 2010; Von Nordenflycht, 2010), but do not directly seek to say that much about issues relating to Volume 20 Number 6 November 2013



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diversity, including gender. Von Nordenflycht’s (2010, p. 166) theory and taxonomy of knowledgeintensive firms defines PSFs as characterized by a highly professionalized workforce, knowledge intensity and low capital intensity, but similarly does not raise any considerations directly relating to gender. These and other previous PSF theories and career promotion frameworks (for example, Gilson and Mnookin, 1985, 1989) are presented in ways that assume gender neutrality, although these authors would probably agree that many women lawyers experience more limited career development opportunities than men that negatively influence their capacities to win new client business and break the glass-ceiling through promotion to partner (Gorman and Kmec, 2009). In summary, theoretical perspectives on PSFs have tended to iterate abstract themes of professional and organizational commitments and often do not say enough about employees’ perspectives and diversity management. They also oversimplify the diversity of employee identities expressed in PSFs (Brown et al., 2010; Kuhn, 2009; Orrange, 2003). Some theorists may continue to assume that a high status professional career in a global corporate law firm or in PSFs is incompatible with maintaining work–family balance. A particularly critical issue for women lawyers seeking promotion to partner is said to be the extent that they are available 24/7 for client communication and professional peer interaction (Beckman and Phillips, 2005). However, women’s networks of clients are increasing (Suseno et al., 2007) and it seems improbable that women lawyers freely choose to participate in PSFs in ways that automatically defer to preferential career advancement for men. In the next section we describe our research, which examines the similarities and differences in men and women lawyers’ understandings of promotion to partner.

Methodology Based on our literature review of PSFs and gender, we examine women’s opportunities for promotion to partner and their accounts of career advancement in the PSF. The research is based on an empirical case study of a large, international professional partnership law firm. It is a large full service corporate law firm ranked within the top 20 firms worldwide (for example, American Lawyer, 2003; Kriegler, 2011). It is a qualitative interview study of corporate lawyers holding a range of positions (junior lawyer, senior lawyer, senior associate and partner) and located in three cities in Australia. The sample included lawyers who were identified by the human resource management section and some senior partners to have significant potential to contribute to the firm. The gender composition was not evenly subdivided (initially 22 men and eight women). The distribution of the male group is more weighted towards the latter career stages than the female group, which has a younger profile (early career 11 men, five women; mid-career five men, two women; mature three men, one women; final years three men, 0 woman). Two sets of interviews were held at the law firm offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and lasted between 1–2 hours each. Both researchers were present at all of the interviews. The interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim by the first author and a research assistant. The first set of interviews focused on professional competence and the second set concentrated on organizational strategy and individual career strategies. The first set of interviews on professional competence consisted of six principal questions covering the practice of corporate law, its meaning, the people and tools of the job and whether or not there were any differences between men and women in their approaches to legal practice. No substantive gender differences in professional practice were given by our research participants. In contrast, the question on gender and promotion prompted a noticeably different response from men and women lawyers, which we decided to follow up further in the second interview study. In the second interview study, we spent 1–2 hours with each respondent in conversation on organizational strategy and their professional careers. This set of interview topics and questions addressed the national and global legal and business environments and then moved on to consider the internal environment of the organization as well as the firm’s business and marketing strategies. In the second stage of these interviews the questions prompted a more detailed biographical conversation on individuals’ backgrounds, careers, views, and thoughts about the future.



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Our results section commences with a comparison of some of the general findings and themes in the data for men and women’s careers and then concentrates on their views about women lawyers’ opportunities for promotion to partner. The data were analysed in a number of phases. Our approach was interpretive and sought to gain a phenomenological perspective of interviewees’ accounts of professional competence, organizational strategy and career. We interpreted four distinct approaches to competence (see Sandberg and Pinnington, 2009) and four alternative approaches to strategy. In this article we give a summary of our categories of competence as background, showing no major differences in competence between men and women lawyers, except that more men had equity partner-level experience, affording them more opportunity for competence development in this organizational role. We concentrate on the data on careers which formed the latter section of questions in each of the two sets of interviews. Our qualitative analysis uncovered major differences in interviewees’ accounts of gender. In the results section we report this gendered perspective on unequal opportunities in promotion as well as the women lawyers’ difficulties with relating to some aspects of client marketing, long-hours working and partner-level business roles. Based on their spoken career commitments, we subdivided them into three groups which we named ‘Stay with the firm’ (13 lawyers), ‘Join another firm’ (13 lawyers), and ‘Compromise/exit the law’ (four lawyers). The distribution of the eight women lawyers according to these same categories had a similar profile (3, 4, 1, respectively).

Results and interpretation Men and women lawyers’ career trajectories Table 1 shows the women lawyers’ job position in 2003 and 2008, their rated understanding of competence and strategy (1 = technician focused; 2 = project management; 3 = competitive analysis, and 4 = global), career stage in 2003 and trajectory and tenure expectations. The job position mentioned in the left-hand column in Table 1 refers to 2003 and the right-hand column to 2008. However, in 2008 only the first three lawyers in the list were still working in the same firm. In 2008, 5 years later, two senior associate men lawyers had been internally promoted to partner and two senior associate women lawyers had been internally promoted to special counsel. Taking into account that 10 interviewees were partner in 2003, combined with the benefit of hindsight, there was only a limited promotion opportunity available to this select group of high-potential lawyers. The stay with the firm group of women lawyers is weighted towards seniority (one partner and two special counsel). The two women senior associates who stayed with the firm were promoted to special counsel, but the rest have remained relatively static in their job position, with three working in other corporate law firms in a similar position and level in the hierarchy, and two others employed as lawyers in a company and a non-profit organization, respectively. In the first set of interviews on competence, we derived four categories to explain the variation in their accounts. These four categories, we argue (Sandberg and Pinnington, 2009), are four distinct forms of self-understanding in competent professional practice: legal services provider, facilitator, business advisor and trusted business advisor. In the second set of interviews on strategy and careers we found a similar set of self-understandings in organizational and career strategies. Both interpretive categories (competence and strategy) become increasingly elaborate from the first to the fourth form of self-understanding. For the group of eight women lawyers we found that four were at the same level for competence and strategy, and two (a lawyer and senior associate) were reasoning strategically at a level higher than the accounts they gave of competent legal practice. The four forms of self-understanding of strategy we named: technician focused, project management, competitive analysis and global (see Table 2). We classified half the women in the project management category. For example, ‘in corporate you have now got people like myself who specialise in project work and mining work and that is I think Volume 20 Number 6 November 2013



2

Technical matters Process skills Legal services provider (5) 0 0

Knowledge Understanding Competence (N = 29; 1 missing) Competence women (n = 8) Strategy women (n = 8)

Mid

Early

Early

Early

Mature

Early

Early

Mid

Career stage

Technician focused

2

3

3

2

2

3

2

4

Strategy

Lawyers’ focus

Table 2: Four approaches to strategy

Compromise/exit the law Special counsel

2

Lawyer

2

Join another firm Special counsel

3

2

Senior associate

Senior associate

2

Senior associate

2

4

Stay with the firm Partner

Lawyer

Competence (1–4)

Position in 2003

Table 1: Women lawyers’ careers (2003–2008)

Stay

Exit law permanently

Quit for another law firm Stay P/T

Stay

Career break

Stay P/T

Stay

Tenure expectation

Client requirements Project issues Facilitator (6) 6 4

Client businesses Client industries Business advisor (9) 1 3

Competitive analysis

Approaches to strategy Project management

Static

Uncertain

Uncertain

Senior associate

Static

Limited promotion intention

Static

Remain partner

Career trajectory

Elite advisor Leverage resources Trusted business advisor (9) 1 1

Global

Corporate lawyer, limited liability company, Australia

Special counsel, top 10 Australian law firm Director/solicitor, advice and rights centre, Australia Associate, top 10 Australian law firm, Sydney Associate, magic circle law firm, London

Partner, Australian global law firm Special counsel, Australian global law firm Special counsel, Australian global law firm

Position in 2008

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the big difference is the degree of specialization’ special counsel, I25f).1 Their low level of presence in the most elaborate form of global strategic reasoning, we believe, is primarily because only two of the women had significant client business and partnership management experience at senior associate and partner levels. A large number of interviewees commented on the fact that the governance system of the firm means that access to informed discussion and decision-making in organizational strategy comes after promotion to partner: ‘I don’t think the globablisation of the legal industry really became an issue until at earliest, 6 or 7 years ago maybe. I mean I became a partner about 7 or 8 years ago so I suppose I wasn’t really privy to it before that’ (Partner I19m). The absence of women in the technician focused category is possibly due to the low sample size. What is evident from our categories is that almost two-thirds of men in the sample adopt competitive analysis and global approaches to strategy compared with half the women lawyers. This implies that men will more often encounter other men discussing issues of global business strategy, whereas most discussions with women are likely to be oriented towards project management and competitive market considerations. The diverse accounts given by men implied they were included in the business strategy of their organization and that they believed themselves capable of contributing to the firm’s goals. Further, they perceived that opportunities for promotion existed in the PSF. This group of men mainly noted exceptions in terms of the differences in access to promotion as a result of their ethnic background, culture and, to some extent, social class. The sample of women lawyers reported here is small compared to the male sample and they expressed greater concern about exclusion. Our interviewees expressed the opinion that in all likelihood women would take on more than a half share of the family caring responsibilities (‘Well it is the women who take the time out though isn’t it to meet [family commitments]’ Senior associate, I5f). The women lawyers conveyed their pride and commitment to their work and professional career, together with mentioning their participation in family life: Interviewer: How do you see your career evolving from here? That is a really hard one because I am getting to the point obviously you know, early thirties where family issues start to be a consideration. You know when are we going to start having a family? (Senior associate, I14f). Regarding their visible contribution to the PSF’s strategy and opportunities for promotion, the women lawyers declared that they were at a disadvantage compared with their male professional colleagues and the men independently seemed to agree with them: But I, but it, until such time as there is an equality of males and females across all levels of industry, it’s definitely, I think it’s going to be more difficult for women than for men. (Partner, I8m) It takes a long time for that to work its way right through a firm’s culture and I think we’ve probably got more women for example than most of the other large firms. (Partner, I9m) It is probably harder to be a woman, I would probably say it is harder for them to be, or they could be a great lawyer but they might never get the opportunities to get the experience to get there. And I suppose the hard working bit may limit some women who might choose to have a family. I think in Jane’s case she compromised a fair bit.... I don’t know whether it was true or not, but she had the child on Saturday and came back into the office Tuesday. So you know there are sacrifices that she had to make to be a great lawyer. Huge sacrifices, sacrifices.... I mean that, that probably just ties in with that hardworking. They work hard, they are available to clients at all times. So I think just for a female who wants to have a family, it would be incredibly difficult. (Senior lawyer, I11m) It was, however, not generally acceptable to advocate the introduction of new forms of collective engagement in equal opportunities, anti-discrimination and work–life balance programmes. Stories of women colleagues not being promoted, changing from full time to part time and staying away on longer periods of work leave were told, but conveyed with an expression and tone of voice indicating Volume 20 Number 6 November 2013



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they were private matters. Further, such communication in public was presented by some of the women lawyers as likely to be damaging to work relationships, including one’s personal reputation with colleagues: The male norms are very, very strong. When I first started working in law [X] years ago, one, a girl tried to organize a group at lunch to discuss maternity leave. And she got into such trouble. And I remember that and thought that was extraordinary and then about five years ago, there was anoth[er] something similar organized here and one of the female partners came in and spoke to the person who was presenting it and basically told her that she had no right to be doing what she was doing in front of a whole lot of female lawyers. You know, that is atrocious. If you are not even allowed ... I don’t think we had a maternity policy up until 2 years ago. And that is the big thing. You want to know that if you have worked for a place for 10 years, you might be able to get your job back if you want to have a child. (Special counsel, I12f) One male equity partner (partner, I18m) had this to say about the difficulties faced by women in promotion to the top of the firm: I believe that it is still probably the case that a lot of men still prefer to deal with men in the business environment. Interviewer: Why would they prefer to deal with men do you think? Just because of the, the ah [pause]. The blokey aspect to it ... I am not talking at all about competence, I am not talking at all about anything other than the fact that ... until our environment has moved.... a much higher level of women as a percentage in each level of industry whether it’s in boardrooms or in partnerships or law firms or everywhere. It’s just going to be. There is just going to be that one extra obstacle for a woman that isn’t there for a man.

Career advancement and promotion to partner? Women described their career advancement as being different from that of men. Reflecting the research findings reported by Epstein (1981, p. 382) on lawyers during 1960 to 1980, women face a difficult ‘balancing act between demands of work and of home because of the scarcity of institutionalized assistance’. It should, however, be remembered that arranging childcare is less of a financial problem for high earning employees, such as corporate lawyers, than it is for lower income earners (Stone, 2007). On combining partnership with family life one declared: ‘I just don’t think it is possible’ (senior associate, I5f). While this perception is not unique to the legal profession, the general impression given was that working and raising a family was harder to balance in a large corporate law firm: I think, there was one lawyer who did work part time she left to have a baby and she tried working part time and it didn’t really work out and so she left. I just find it really disappointing with the area that I’m in like I sometimes look at my friends they’re in the health area like they’re doctors or they’re pharmacist or whatever and they can work part time and I just don’t think it really works with us. So in that sense there is a difference between males and females. (Senior associate, I14f) Work opportunities for women lawyers have been gradually improving for over three decades in Australia. However, this view of a woman lawyer is typical of the opinions expressed: I’m not confident that the sort of part-time working arrangements and flexible working arrangements suit the law firms they don’t work here at all. I think it is an enormous pressure of women in those roles because they are trying to do things fast, be committed, be up-to-date and as if they were a full time lawyer and they don’t have as much time and it just seems to result in them becoming far too pressurized. That would be the main gender issue. (Lawyer, I16f) Few women lawyers in the PSF were perceived to be successfully combining work and family life as an equity partner:



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And I think it is an issue and it is an issue that concerns younger women who I think don’t really see any clear path for how they could progress their career and have a family and that is where a lot of them just bopped out, do something else. (Partner, I27f) Most of the women equity partners had had children after being promoted, and most but not all were working full time after maternity leave. There were some examples of a few men who were beginning to take longer periods of parental leave: Yes I do see men moving away faster all the time. Because they, they don’t as often have to deal with that and I can say that about a lawyer who is in our group who is a man who has just gone on parental leave. And that is absolutely fantastic because he sets an example to the others that you can do it and don’t be frightened to ask, and maybe when he comes back to work from his parental leave he will have some of the same sort of issues as some of the other women lawyers that I’ve seen. And it becomes a less gender issue and more a parental issue. (Lawyer, I16f) There was a general belief that it was hard for a woman to be promoted to partner (‘It is easy because most of the partners are male and I think that they find it easier dealing with men’ special counsel, I12f). One explanation given for the disparity in the proportion of men and women promoted to partner was that key selection bodies such as the partnership promotion committee were dominated by men who preferred to select other lawyers who seemed similarly willing to work 12–14 hours per day. One male lawyer commented humorously on the effect upon his social contacts of working long hours: ‘You don’t meet anybody but lawyers. Nobody else works the hours you do. [Laughter]. Um. There is a fair bit of truth in that’ (senior associate, I4m). For six of the women, working excessive hours was impractical over their envisaged working life (‘but I don’t see myself in a few year’s time being in a position to seek partnership’ senior associate, I14f). For them it was not a viable long-term career due to the hours (‘I don’t really want to be a partner. I don’t want to work the long hours’; woman lawyer). Large corporate law firms in Australia were not experimenting much with part-time methods of employment at equity partner level, since it required new approaches to organizing work and managing performance (‘Working full-time and having a family and, you know, you just don’t see very good examples of it really working’; senior associate, I14f). One male partner talked at great length about the difficulties he faced in ensuring his firm accommodated work–family considerations. Quoted below is only a small extract from what he said to us: Interviewer: But how do you explain the fact that I think it is almost a bit more than 50 per cent of the law graduates are women, they come out from law school and then only about 5 per cent of them end up as partners? Because, that is generally because of what happens is they don’t, they leave to have children. Take our group, our group, we have more female lawyers than male, pretty much at any point in time, because and that is from nothing other than they are the best applicants for the jobs, but how many made it to partnership?.... I wish they would not go away and have children because we recruit them and they are excellent lawyers and then they leave.... But I think that now, what you might say though is perhaps, perhaps more firms haven’t yet fully grappled with the notion of part-time partnership and look they probably haven’t frankly. (Partner, I8m) The woman lawyer in our sample who is still a partner was not seen by some of the others who knew her as typical of the dual-career family. She and her husband decided he would spend more time parenting their children (‘I mean I am the opposite, I have four children and my husband basically has retired from being a lawyer’. Partner, I27f). Stone (2007, p. 18) found successful women executives ‘quit only as a last resort’ and that formidable work demands compelled women to relinquish highly valued employment. Stone’s (2007) research on women in high paid occupations shows that more women than men give up work to look after their families, including when they are the higher earner in dual-income families. Volume 20 Number 6 November 2013



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The women lawyers in our sample were all (to varying degrees) responsible for clients and in some of their accounts displayed a professional persona consistent with the ‘client-type’ category (Sandefur, 2001) who commits to winning new clients and retaining existing clients. We did not identify a specifically gendered competence in relating to clients, although some would argue that female lawyers may utilise ‘a more contextual form of perception and reasoning’ and will tend to ‘stress others’ needs’ more often than men (Relis, 2009, p. 247). However, in male-dominated organizational settings, client marketing may be harder to achieve for some women. Several of the male equity partners (for example, I8m, I9m and I18m) suggested that things are changing regarding client work, but only slowly: Interviewer: Does it matter if you are a male or female when you are practising corporate law? I will say no. But subject to this qualification that there are more women now coming through the business circles and that is making it easier. The reality is that the business community is still fairly bloke-ish, you know, still dominated by males. Some of them are real kick about guys who like to tell dirty jokes, drink beer, go to the rugby and I think that is sometimes a barrier to some incredibly talented female lawyers. I think we are getting better.... A lot of lawyers in my team are women. (Partner, I9m) Our study data can be interpreted as showing that men and women lawyers’ understandings of their professional careers are the same in so far as most assert that gender does not produce a career advantage in competent professional practice, although commercial business and marketing skills may be easier to develop for male lawyers working in client settings composed mostly of men. The accounts given by the interviewees implied there was no formal preparation of senior associates for promotion. Rather, senior associates depended on maintaining informal support from influential partners in their immediate work group. The custom and practice in this firm was for senior associates considered eligible for promotion to partner in 1–3 years’ time to be given additional opportunities for experience in winning new business and managing major clients. A contributing factor to the lack of formal internal career development for senior associates was the strategy of the firm, which had been to hire from the external labour market productive lawyers who could bring in new client business or had the perceived potential to be ‘rainmakers’: The strategy which was called the base case of going getting good other lawyers from other firms, which we adopted I think in [the] 1998 plan if you like, was brought about really by lack of alternative options, lack of alternatives. Um. And um it has really helped develop partner income and develop the client base. The risk is that it erodes the culture and it has been horrendous to the culture of the Sydney office and it also has the risk of partner fall out. (Partner, I27f) The accounts of men and women of the fairness of this situation differ in that there was a lack of common interest expressed in changing the status quo. The men implied that they were willing to continue with the traditional approach to promotion to partner while simultaneously acknowledging that it disadvantages many women.

Discussion Our case research on men and women lawyers’ different understandings of their professional careers reveals some of the complex processes of social reproduction of gendered differences (for example, Dinovitzer and Garth, 2007; Kay and Hagan, 1995, 1998) on work and family commitments. Our findings show that in the Australian context of increasing employment opportunities for women, many social and organizational constraints remain on talking openly about the career and promotion difficulties they experienced. Whereas both men and women lawyers may benefit from relatively minor innovations such as metrics measuring diversity, our case study shows how in different ways they conform to the status quo and construct the opportunity for advancement principally based on



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the heritage of the past rather than on ideas of innovation or social change. A first step towards diversity management in this and other similar PSFs is to encourage open conversation about diversity. This will develop more receptiveness towards the introduction of formal methods of career development. While we encountered few accounts of organizational gender segmentation in our sample of lawyers engaged in corporate legal services, plentiful references were made to gendered hierarchical stratification with men occupying most of the executive positions in elite client and law firms. Gender differences in occupational power and human capital rewards (Reskin and Bielby, 2005) were most evident in the limit to women’s career advancement by the glass ceiling in promotion to partner. This is consistent with Leiper’s (2006, pp. 186–87) study of women lawyers, which concluded there are increasing levels of segmentation in the legal profession, with a greater proportion of women often being consigned to second-tier positions, especially at the elite end of the legal community. There were limited opportunities for promotion to partner in this firm. Over 5 years, for the 20 lawyers below partner level, two men were promoted to partner and two women were promoted to special counsel. The interviewees’ accounts suggest that gender stereotypes about the higher levels of competence and strategy needed combined with the male domination of upper-level positions were likely to have contributed to this promotion outcome (Kay and Gorman, 2008). Interestingly, the two experienced women senior associates both expressed the view that their careers would remain static and so may, in some ways, have been complicit with their own promotion to the non-traditional title of senior counsel (Gorman, 1999). This firm historically grew through a number of domestic mergers. At the time of the research it was not engaged in substantial organizational restructuring and was cautiously expanding its network of international offices. It is, however, evident that there has been slow change in the sample of interviewees possessing over ten or more years’ tenure in the equity partnership and that most of the younger lawyers interviewed had since left for positions in other law firms. The limited opportunities for promotion in the firm are likely to have influenced this group of lawyers’ organizational commitment. Only a few of the lawyers and senior associates seemed satisfied with their professional career opportunities, although most gave examples of rewards viewed as equitable for different positions in the professional hierarchy, having individual discretion and control over aspects of their professional work and saying that they experienced collegial relationships in their work groups (Wallace, 1995). Overall, there is not much evidence reported in this case study for dramatic organizational restructuring, as was described by Galanter and Roberts (2008), although the proportion of partners to lawyers (1:3 approximately 290 partners/900 legal staff) does not reflect the higher leverage ratios sought by elite US and UK firms (Galanter and Henderson, 2008). Our interviewees did not have much to say either about gender discrimination in society in general except for a few accounts that some professional occupations such as medical general practice appeared to be more accommodating of senior women professionals and that the general business environment in Australia remains male dominated. Interviewees were less explicit about the way in which clients really are intolerant of partner-level contacts in the firm who are unavailable 24/7 (Sommerlad and Sanderson, 1998; Hagan and Kay, 2007). However, the equity partner role in this organization is understood by men and women lawyers as frequently requiring equity partners to privilege work considerations over family. Law firms depend on appropriating profits based on the long hours of work of lawyers (Hitt et al., 2001, 2006; Sherer, 1995) and the pressure is often implicit and exerted primarily by work colleagues in the PSF who, as Lazega (2001, p. 135) phrases it, ‘exercise this unobtrusive but insistent pressure to put in more time’. At a minimum, the role of equity partner means being devoted to a highly involved business work life that means that lawyers will sometimes ‘struggle to reconcile work dedication with their commitment to family’ (Blair-Loy, 2003, p. 1). Consistent with Wallace’s (1999) findings on work-to-non-work conflict, the two married women with children did not have much to say about long working hours, whereas the six women (married and unmarried) who had not yet reached motherhood often referred to the difficulties of working long hours. Since it appears that most of the men aspiring to partnership are not seeking to increase their commitment to family and concomitantly reduce their time spent at work, inevitably the Volume 20 Number 6 November 2013



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problem of family commitments continues to be socially constructed by men and women lawyers as principally a dilemma facing women. Our case study findings concurs with Kay and Gorman’s (2008, p. 323) conclusion that ‘women continue to confront the profession’s lack of accommodation for family responsibilities, as well as negative career repercussions associated with motherhood’. Individual and collective identities are not immutable and are discursively communicated and contested (Alvesson and Billing, 2009; Brown, 2006). However, in this PSF the extent of agreement and disagreement voiced over gender seems to preserve work identities that conform to the career promotion norm of professional workers devoting much of their daily waking time to work (Ackers, 2007; Landers et al., 1996). Each interviewee offered mixed evaluations of the equity of their career advancement and different promotion prospects, but they conformed overall to the norm expecting more men than women to be promoted to equity partner. Jorgensen’s (2002) study of 15 women’s engineering careers is one of several research reports where professional women dispute that gender inequalities exist and portray their work as gender neutral. Our male and female interviewees, however, offered more accounts of unequal than equal opportunities for promotion to partner. Jorgensen’s research participants articulated contradictory, multiple positions on their work identities and concluded that work– family policies might increase retention. By contrast, our interviewees were not especially enthusiastic about the likely positive impact of work–family policies in reducing high working time expectations. As at 2011 22 per cent of the partners in the firm are women, which is higher than the commonly stated ranges of approximately 13–17 per cent, and a few of the large and medium sized firms are achieving more (Collins, 2011; Gilbert and Tobin, 2011). This suggests that men and women lawyers’ attitudes accurately reflected the continuing limitations to women lawyers’ career prospects but under-emphasized the gradual erosion of the glass ceiling in their firm. It was apparent that while the male interviewees recognized the difficulties of combining work and family, they did not express a desire to spend more time with their families and presumed that this would usually be the greater role responsibility of women lawyers. Likewise, all except one of the women assumed that the woman will work the double shift by taking on more family responsibilities than men outside work or will have to reduce the time they spent at work for some of their professional working lives (Stone, 2007). Whereas we do not wish to argue that most lawyers ardently endorse long work hours’ organizational cultures, we propose that men and women often conform to the economic requirements of the organization, including many of its knowledge appropriation, time-recording and billing routines (Brivot, 2011; Brown and Lewis, 2011). At times during these interviews we were reasonably convinced that this group of women lawyers were dissatisfied with their opportunities for career development. They considered it likely that in their later two-thirds of their careers the rewards (financial, professional task and organizational status) would be distributed in favour of men (Mueller and Wallace, 1996). We suggest, consistent with our interviewees’ views, that these gendered understandings of the relationship of professional work to family influence lawyers’ careers in ways that discourage many talented women from seeking more than part-time employment or salaried partner and special counsel statuses when working as a senior professional with caring commitments for children, parents and other members of their families (Blair-Loy, 2003; Campbell et al., 2008). We also recommend that firms implement training for partners that encourages them to become more self-aware of the conscious and unconscious processes of instituting double standards whereby men and women are treated differently in the assessment of their professional competence, their task achievements and their promotion potential (Foschi, 1996, 2000, 2009). Specific important areas that this case study reveal are making improvements in the analysis of competence and development needs at the levels of business advisor and trusted business advisor; and the planned development of senior associates’ strategic knowledge and skills in competitive analysis and global strategic management. An area worthy of future research is the collaboration between academics, law firms and professional institutes to identify in what ways the professional work of a lawyer can be reorganized to meet corporate clients’ needs for professional business and legal advice, while sustaining



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improved opportunities for men and women lawyers to fulfil other commitments outside work. More open reporting by firms and the publication of demographic data on gender representation and employee diversity by professional institutes might contribute to knowledge on diversity and promoting equal opportunities.

Conclusion This article has argued that traditional models of the PSF do not attend to issues of diversity, including problems of the glass ceiling for women. Whereas more recent theories of the restructured professional organization are an improvement in this respect, they cannot reflect many of the complex dynamics in PSFs. They do not attend precisely enough to many of the factors, events and actions that lead to an improvement or, indeed, a worsening of equity and diversity in employment, promotion and rewards. A major challenge for mainstream organizational models of competence and strategic management is to move away from the strong separation of work from family and business from society. Our case study reveals a number of ways in which men and women are encouraged to persist with the status quo in their organizations, and is relevant to many contexts where making improvements to diversity is held back by a lack of leadership from senior management. In this firm, with the men not wishing to spend more time away from work or anticipating the need to do so in the future, it is not surprising that they are willing to empathize with women’s dilemma while not being especially proactive in pressurizing for change to PSF work organization and careers. This suggests that, alongside the slow-paced societal advances in gender equity in employment, the rate of increasing women’s inclusion in the equity partnership of law firms will be influenced over time by women lawyers advocating improvements to their professional career circumstances. Further, academic researchers have a role to play in developing theories of the PSF which represent more adequately issues of employee diversity, professional careers and the glass ceiling, such as the inclusion of women in the equity partnership. The professional institutes can also do much more to improve career development policies in firms and encourage improved practices and skills in related activities, including promotion and succession planning, promotion reviews and performance management. Professionals and HRM staff should be encouraged to be more expert in the practice of diversity management and be encouraged by senior management to engage in an open and constructive debate on issues relating to equal opportunities and flexible working practices.

Acknowledgement The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council, Strategic Partnerships with Industry Research and Training Grant No. C00107500 October 2000. The ARC grant, ‘Organisation of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services during Internationalisation’ was held (2001–2005) at the University of Queensland and the University of Western Sydney. Also, our thanks to the University of Queensland Business School for internal funding support for the interview data collection and to the lawyers and managers in the law firm who participated in the research.

Note 1.

Each interviewee has been given a unique number prefixed with the letter I and a suffix to denote m = male or f = female.

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