The Association of Women Solicitors’ recent survey confirmed something that those lawyers who work part-time – often, but not exclusively, women with children – already know only too well. As the number of hours they spend in the office reduces, so too does their status within it.

I have always been puzzled by law firms’ attitude to part-time work. While employers in local government, and to some extent in private practice outside of the capital, are more willing to offer more flexible working patterns, for the most part the City firms still stubbornly refuse. There was a great fanfare recently when Allen & Overy announced it was to introduce part-time partnerships. But to me, it spoke volumes that something that would be seen as run of the mill in most sectors of employment – even journalism - should be regarded as cutting edge within the legal profession.

For the vast majority of women lawyers in the City, the sad fact is that part-time work is not really an option – and that means work itself is no longer an option.

A classic case is a friend of mine, who has a son the same age as my daughter. She was a regulatory lawyer in a niche City firm before her son was born. As the end of maternity leave approached, she knew that the firm did not offer any form of part-time work. Her husband works away a lot, and there would be no way she could get her son to and from nursery without some reduction in her hours, so she was forced to quit.

Fortunately, my friend found academia more accommodating and now works two mornings a week lecturing law in a way that easily fits around her childcare arrangements. But many mums in a similar situation are lost to the profession altogether.

It really bugs me that women lawyers working part-time should be viewed as lacking commitment. It could be argued that these women actually show more commitment to the job than some of their full-time colleagues. For those returning from maternity leave, the decision to come back to work is a positive affirmation of how much they value their professional role. When you take into account what they are probably shelling out in childcare, the chances are they are not just doing it for the money. The AWS survey showed that there is a tremendously high level of job satisfaction among women in the profession – 80% of them really enjoy being solicitors.

So returning mums carefully research and analyse the best childcare options for their precious little one, they organise a system of drop-offs and pickups, and contingency plans for when the child is ill, and they negotiate a new working pattern with their employer that will almost certainly involve them doing pretty much the same amount of work, but being paid for fewer hours.

How is that not showing commitment?

Then they return to work to gradually realise that they are somehow not regarded as the high flyer that they used to be. The best clients are going to someone else, the promotion gets handed out to the colleague on the next desk. Something has changed since before that maternity leave, and it’s not just the few pregnancy pounds that haven’t quite disappeared yet.

When that realisation dawns, that is when many women solicitors – the ‘lucky’ ones who were able to squeeze enough of a flexible working pattern out of their firms to enable them to return to work – decide they’ve had enough. And who can blame them?