Magic circle makes women partners disappear

The magic circle firms have appointed the fewest women partners as compared to the rest of the top 50, a Gazette analysis of the annual promotions has shown.

Women comprised an average of 28% of the new partners in the 43 firms which have so far released details of their May promotion round.

However, at the big five firms - Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters & Alliance, Allen & Overy, and Slaughter and May - women made up only 16% of new partners.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer promoted the fewest women of the five, appointing only one woman out of 29 partners worldwide.

Linklaters appointed the most with seven out of 29.

The percentage of new female partners appears to increase as the size of the firm decreases.

For the large firms just outside the magic circle - Lovells, Eversheds, Herbert Smith, Norton Rose and DLA - almost a quarter (24%) of their new partners were female.

Eversheds had the highest number (eight out of 22), with Lovells numbering just three from 19.

The average across the firms between 31 and 50 in terms of size had almost 40% of women in their promotions.

These included Berrymans Lace Mawer, with nine women out of its total of 11.

But Wragge & Co, Clyde & Co, Masons, Taylor Joynson Garrett, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Osborne Clarke and Ince & Co promoted no women.

Karen Aldred, chairwoman of the Association of Women Solicitors, said she was 'dismayed' by the result, and added: 'A full analysis of women at all levels in law firms is needed in order to see whether this is real discrimination, and whether - and for what reason - firms lose women at an earlier stage of their careers, and so are merely promoting from the group available to them.'

A Clifford Chance spokesman said: 'We tend to recruit equal numbers of men and women, and it is a source of some concern that by the time we reach the stage of appointing partners, more women have dropped out than men.

We have been looking at ways of dealing with this problem, and will continue to do so.'

A similar survey by the Gazette in 1999 found that 27% of new partners at the top 50 were women.

Victoria MacCallum