Lawyer Monthly - Women In Law Special Edition

LAWYER MONTHLY WOMEN IN LAW EDITION 32 One of the reasons I think women didn’t venture further to the top in the past, was because they were relatively few women partners that could have acted as role models for them. Nonetheless, I think there has been a real change - I retired as a partner effectively 15 years ago, so my personal experience with the firm is now out of date, but I am amazed and impressed by the radical changes that have taken place in terms of gender diversity and all kinds of other diversity. From taking part in gay pride to lighting the building up to represent the LGBT community and colleagues, I think there has been the most fantastic transformation in the understanding and the importance of inclusion and diversity. It is also a business benefit to have people with different perspectives, different backgrounds and views because it is so much more creative and thus beneficial to bring people who have different ideas to the team. You’ve clearly had an amazing career, what has been the biggest lesson you have learnt overtime? I think the most important thing I have learnt, is to go for things. You have to be brave, foolhardy, or maybe a bit of both, but you should volunteer for things and push yourself to do things that you are not quite sure if you tick all the boxes. My appointment as a Recorder, for example, was a classic example of that. I thought, ‘I reckon I am a pretty good lawyer, I think I could do the job having watched other people do it’, and it was only once I had been appointed when people mentioned how I was ‘being brave’, and I thought, ‘am I?’. I hadn’t realised I was being that brave, but in hindsight, I was. It was, and remains to some extent, quite a scary thing to do, because it was so far from the job that I had become quite experienced in. You have to have the necessary competence but also the confidence to go right back to the bottom to something you know you don’t fully know how to do particularly well. Having to go from a respected senior professional, to right back to the bottom of the learning curve is really quite a difficult thing to do, and to be honest, I think it requires a level of humility and courage, as well as hard work. You realise you are up against people that know more than you and with much more experience than you, which is quite a daunting experience when you have reached a senior position in another field yourself. The upside is that I feel it has been incredibly worthwhile. I have found it has been immensely rewarding, and at a personal level, it is very satisfying to have overcome challenges to be able to do something that is really difficult. I say to people, ‘Why do some people climb mountains?’. They do it because it is really difficult but when you get to the approached me [at the Women in Law Conference] that this is not something I think solicitors should jump into, but I want to plant the seed, so they are aware of the opportunity. In your opinion, why do you think that there are fewer female judges in comparison to male? Oh, that’s a big question and really quite a difficult one! Actually, interestingly, I know from my work on the Judicial Appointments Commission, that women are typically more successful when they do apply. And I think that is true of many things: women are more reluctant to apply for a whole range of reasons, including not wanting to do the job, which is of course perfectly acceptable. But they tend to be better prepared when they do apply. The success rate of women typically outstrips the success rate of men, so it is really a question of whether women are applying in great enough numbers. And I think that is where the issue lies. As you evolved throughout your career at Linklaters LLP, did you see a change in diversity and inclusivity? Yes, I think it did change. I never for a moment detected any discrimination or any suggestion that female solicitors were less able than male solicitors, in fact, it was well known that female solicitors were amongst the highest performers. But, many of them made a career choice, for all the sorts of reasons that we have been hearing about [today] about not pursuing their career to the top. Q Q Q “ “ You have to be brave, foolhardy, or maybe a bit of both, but you should volunteer for things and push yourself to do things that you are not quite sure if you tick all the boxes.