In the first part of an eight-page special on partnerships, Jon Robins examines what firms are doing to clear the rocky road to promotion, especially for minority groups and women


It’s called ‘new partner syndrome’. ‘You can often tell when you have a new partner on the phone on the other side of a transaction because they can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as well as just a little officious and pompous,’ reckons James Bateson, head of the corporate and regulatory insurance practice at City firm Norton Rose, and a member of its management board. ‘It can be a bit like when you make the wrong guy prefect at school and the power goes to their head.’


The partner promotion season is here. Many solicitors aspire to partnership as their crowning professional achievement, and no doubt there will be a minor outbreak of the aforementioned condition. Other lawyers, though, will feel left on the shelf to contemplate their own career prospects.


‘It is a slightly odd structure, whereby in your early to mid-30s you are suddenly either a partner in the firm or not – and that division is pretty stark,’ reflects Tony Williams, the former managing partner at City-based global firm Clifford Chance who now runs legal management consultancy Jomati.


‘A lot of people are seeing the pressures and some decide that it isn’t what they want or not necessarily what they want in the firm they are in.’


Most firms still have the ‘up-or-out’ culture, he says, whereas others recognise the benefit of those solicitors who do not want partnership. ‘But finding a long-term role for people in those firms can be quite a challenge,’ he adds.


Then there are those candidates who reckon they have been overlooked for other reasons. ‘Where are all the black partners at big City firms?’ asked the former parliamentary under-secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs David Lammy last year. A Gazette survey of the top 15 law firms last month found that slightly more than 7% of partners appointed in the UK in this year’s round of promotions were from ethnic minorities (see [2005] Gazette, 28 April, 3). The overall percentage of ethnic minority solicitors in the profession is nearly 8%, roughly in line with the population as a whole. The survey also found that slightly more than 30% of new partners appointed at top firms this year were women; they hold almost 40% of practising certificates.

‘The City firms have an extremely long way to go to redress what some would say is discrimination against black and ethnic minority lawyers,’ says Yvonne Brown, chairwoman of the Black Solicitors Network. The recent research might look promising, but she predicts that it is ‘going to take years and years to see any fair distribution of ethnic minority lawyers in those firms’.


‘We still have concerns that firms have an identikit when it comes to appointing trainees,’ Ms Brown continues. She mentions one City firm that recently took on eight trainees – they were all white and all men. ‘Something clearly has gone wrong there,’ she adds. If there is such a filter preventing ethnic minority lawyers getting into the top firms at trainee level then, she asks, how much worse is that going to be at partnership level?


Hannah Wiskin, chairwoman of the Young Solicitors Group (YSG), maintains that the statistics as they relate to women ‘if they are true across the board’ would ‘be very encouraging indeed. But they don’t seem to be borne out by what we see on the ground’. Ms Wiskin recalls last year’s research by the Law Society, the Association of Women Solicitors and the YSG, based on a study conducted by Westminster University. It revealed that half of the 40,000 women solicitors in England and Wales contemplated quitting the profession because of the long-hours culture and pay discrimination.


‘Firms aren’t doing enough to retain women, particularly at the very time they are likely to be considered for partnership,’ Ms Wiskin argues. ‘Law firms are still recruiting their partners in the old mould. They aren’t looking for different types of partners to reflect different requirements and the different members of the firm.’ If more than half of the people coming into the profession are women, she asks, then why are only one-third of new partners women?


Ms Wiskin rejects the notion that women with young families might not be as effective as other prospective partners when it comes to drumming up work. ‘I know plenty of male partners you would never put near the clients because they just aren’t people-lawyers but they are good academic lawyers,’ she says. ‘Women make good networkers but that doesn’t always mean that they have to stay until 10pm on a Thursday. They can make their contacts in other ways.’


So what should the new generation of partners expect from the forthcoming round of appointments? Becoming a partner is ‘a bit like joining a club’ where there are ‘certain rules and conventions,’ reckons Mr Bateson. ‘By the time someone is ready to be a partner, they should have the technical skills and they’re probably beginning to develop some business instinct, but there is still a harsh reality that dawns when you become partner,’ he says. ‘You are often left on your own to build your business… One of the reasons why many partners are under huge amounts of pressure, strain and stress is because they feel very much on their own.’


The last year has been ‘the best and toughest year of my career,’ reckons John Greager, who was made a partner at City firm Fox Williams last year. What did it mean to him? ‘I wanted the autonomy to shape my own future in a way I couldn’t as an employee,’ he says. ‘I wanted much greater involvement not only in the management of the firm but also of clients. I am now wholly responsible for the client and the business. This is fantastic because having spent years as a litigator, it’s nice to be in a position where I’m sitting with the client on the other side of the table.’ He also enjoys ‘the status, the title and, obviously, the remuneration’ that goes with his appointment.


Many City firms run a two-stage approach to partnership where would-be partners are given time to acclimatise to their roles. Lawyers can be salaried or junior partners prior to taking equity. ‘Firms in the City have adopted non-equity or salaried partnership or fixed-share partnerships as a staging post to full equity,’ explains Mr Williams. He adds that many firms are modifying the rigid lockstep model where partners are rewarded according to length of service. He says: ‘Varying degrees of flexibility are being built as well as [the introduction of] gateways before you go through to a certain level of partnership and even some flexibility within lockstep to move people up or down one or two rungs.’


Fox Williams runs a senior associate programme. ‘The idea is two-fold,’ explains Tina Williams, the newly appointed senior partner. ‘It allows the firm to retain really good lawyers, and so they have a career path if they choose partnership as a route, but it also recognises those lawyers who don’t necessarily want partnership.’ As part of the programme, solicitors are offered training on issues such as business development, people management and the firm’s finances.


Increasingly, solicitors are choosing not go into partnership because of ‘the emphasis on the work-life balance’, Ms Williams says. How does the firm perceive those lawyers? ‘We take the view that they may be able to occupy very important positions but using different skill sets and they can make a contribution to the firm,’ she says. ‘But I have always felt it’s a mistake to create special positions for people where it is a way of avoiding addressing whether there is actually a case for retaining them.’


Jon Robins is a freelance journalist