Lack of opportunities for flexible working forces many women to waste their talents by working below their full potential, writes Boma Ozobia

When the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) calls on the legal profession to increase opportunities for flexible working (see [2005] Gazette, 15 September, 4), the Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) applauds. And personally I would argue that flexible working in our profession should now be the rule rather than the exception.


There is no obvious reason for continuing to cling to the concept of the nine-to-five day, which is a relic of the industrial age. We are, after all, living in the new millennium, the inhabitants and beneficiaries of an era that has been hailed as 'the information age'. It is time that we took advantage of our new technologies and used them to reach our full potential.


According to the EOC study, more than two million people aged 25 to 54 work part-time. Of these, nearly nine out of ten are women working part-time so they can combine career development with the responsibilities of caring for children or elderly relatives. The majority of these - 1.36 million according to the study - are so constrained by circumstances that they have to accept work that is far below their real potential. Forced to work part-time to fit in with caring for children or older relatives, they have to take whatever they can get.


This new evidence confirms what the AWS has been saying for years with respect to female solicitors and the injustice and squandering of talent within the legal profession. Unfortunately, this pattern is likely to continue unless employers and the government take steps to promote the use of flexible working to a much greater extent than at present. Anecdotal evidence further suggests that even among the few employers who claim to embrace flexible working, many actually look at it as the flexibility to reduce pay and benefits.


The government should legislate to make flexible working the rule rather than the exception in professions, and not just for the parents of young children. This would place the onus on employers to justify any policies preventing employees within an organisation from utilising a range of flexible options within full-time work.


Imagine the benefit to the economy of better using the 5.6 million people currently working at levels of gross under-utilisation. This surely cannot be over-emphasised. We need pro-active legislation as opposed to the current interminable wait for enlightened senior partners to force middle management to deal humanely with staff who wish or need to work flexibly.


What is so sacrosanct about nominal nine-to-five days spent in the office, particularly in the larger practices? The reality is that the vast majority of solicitors require little more than a computer and access to the Internet to carry out their work. Therefore, there is no reason why a woman solicitor, or indeed a male solicitor, cannot work, for instance, from 8am to 12pm and resume the day at 7pm to finish at 11pm. Clearly, where there are external factors involved, as might be the case in a litigation practice, we must accept that the scope for flexibility may be restricted, but in many cases the quality of work produced should not be lessened and may even be improved by a period of concentration in a quiet home environment.


Employers wishing to retain highly skilled and competent lawyers have to embrace flexibility as a friend, and shed the comfort blanket of traditional working time practices as being irrelevant and inefficient. The current situation is similar to opting to drive a steam-powered locomotive when you could be on the Japanese bullet train - anachronistic and lacking in common sense.


Boma Ozobia is the chairwoman of the Association of Women Solicitors and a partner at London-based law firm Sterling Partnership