Booth: 'macho' long hours may drive women out

Solicitors' firms and barristers' chambers must eradicate the long-hours culture so they do not drive women out of the legal profession, Cherie Booth QC told international lawyers this week.

Ms Booth - the prime minister's wife and a leading employment silk at London's Matrix Chambers - was speaking at the biennial Commonwealth Law Association conference, meeting this week in Melbourne, where she told delegates that 'the long-hours culture - this macho thing - is a real problem.

We need to challenge the assumption that just by being present in the office you are a good lawyer'.

The call came as a survey of leading law firms showed that while most offer flexible working in theory, they do so in a way that prevents or discourages staff from taking it up.

Ms Booth said the profession needed well-rounded practitioners who were not so blinkered that they became 'narrow-minded automatons, sitting at their desks all day churning out boring legal opinions'.

Leading women lawyers at the conference supported her view.

Marilyn Warren, a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia, said law firms were in danger of losing vast amounts of 'feminine intellect' because they were too entrenched to adopt flexible working practices.

'Not all partners have to work 60 to 70 hours a week,' said Ms Warren, suggesting the time was ripe for firms to adopt part-time partnership schemes.

But she warned that women lawyers still had to be prepared to make some sacrifices.

'If women lawyers do not accept top appointments when the are offered - because the timing might not be convenient - then they can't complain that there are not enough women at the top of the profession.'

More than 1,300 lawyers are attending the conference this week in Australia, including more than 150 judges and 30 chief justices.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, and the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, are among the delegates.

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Jonathan Ames in Melbourne