Firms 'must monitor progress of women lawyers'

Women are disappearing off the radar in law firms, which fail to track their career progression or question why so few of them make partner, according to leading woman solicitor Denise Kingsmill.

Speaking at the woman lawyer forum last week, Ms Kingsmill - the deputy chairwoman of the competition commission - urged firms to introduce a monitoring system for female lawyers, providing data to show at what level most women worked and at what stage they left the firm.

'Firms have comprehensive information about their recruitment procedure, and they can provide numbers of their female partners, but there is no data for the stages in between,' said Ms Kingsmill.

'Most firms recruit an equal number of male and female trainees, and yet women remain clustered at the bottom of firms and comprise on average only 11% of partners.

'Firms assume that this is because many women drop out to start a family, but the fact is that they simply do not know because there is no data available about drop-out rates and reasons.'

Ms Kingsmill, who has run her own firm and worked at top City practices, said the legal profession is 'unconsciously prejudiced' against women, but added that this belief was impossible to prove without factual evidence.

Elsewhere at the forum, Janet Gaymer of Simmons & Simmons, the only woman senior partner at a top 25 City firm, said that there are potential pitfalls associated with flexible working.

'Not everyone wants to work flexibly, and those people may feel resentful towards colleagues whom they feel are not putting in the long hours as they are,' she said.

'Everyone in the organisation needs to be properly educated about the benefits of working flexibly, but at the same time managers have to be prepared to say no on occasions when it is not a feasible option.'

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Victoria MacCallum