Soon after the millennium celebrations finish, it is likely that there will be more women than men practising as solicitors.Figures published in a report by a commission of the Hansard Society last week illustrate the growing number of women in the profession.

Last year 53% of qualifying solicitors were women, bringing the total proportion of women to nearly 30%.

But numbers are one thing.

Power is another matter entirely.The Hansard Society report coincided with international women's week.

And international women's day was marked by the Association of Women Solicitors with the group AGM in London.Incoming AWS chairwoman Alison Parkinson told the Gazette before the AGM that women still have a long way to progress before they are on a level pegging with men in the profession.

The most obvious evidence of the disparity in status is found in partnership figures.The Hansard Society's report pointed out that of private practice solicitors of between ten to 19 years' experience, 91% of men were partners compared with 67% of women.

Ms Parkinson maintains the biggest problem is that the drop-out rate from the profession for women is so much higher than that for men.Of the class of 1978, when Ms Parkinson qualified as a solicitor, only one in three women are still practising.

With more than half of newly qualified solicitors being women, that trend could have significant consequences in the near future for the level of expertise in the profession.Urgent and radical measures must be taken to stem that outward flow, according to Ms Parkinson.

'When women have families they need some kind of flexible working environment,' she says.Supporting her theory is an AWS-commissioned survey conducted recently by Cardiff University.

The researchers asked men and women solicitors who had not renewed their practising certificates why they had dropped out of the profession.

Interestingly, women overwhelmingly gave the reason that combining career with family obligations had become too difficult.

The men produced a variety of different responses.One of Ms Parkinson's main aims for her forthcoming year in the AWS chair will be to build up contacts with groups of women lawyers overseas.

Canadian and US women lawyers have taken a much more aggressive and successful approach to resolving their problems within the legal profession, she maintains.In particular, says Ms Parkinson, the Canadian and US Bar associations 'have gone a lot further down the road of producing specific recommendations for maternity leave and paternity leave'.But a patriarchal legal system is not the only problem women must overcome.

According to the AWS there is also an enemy within.

Women at the top of the legal profession often wish to disassociate themselves from the issue of gender, fearing that their success will be attributed to tokenism rather than talent, says the group.Ms Parkinson says one of her main themes for 1996 will be a campaign to encourage successful women lawyers to take an interest in helping younger aspirants up the ladder.Ms Parkinson -- formally a partner in a Shropshire high street firm and now an in-house lawyer at Railtrack -- is adamant that the AWS has shed its image of a social club in favour of a more campaigning group.Indeed, an attack on Chancery Lane will also be in Ms Parkinson's 1996 battle plan.

She points out that there are only ten women on the Council and that action must be taken to bring that representation up to a more accurate reflection of the profession's demographics.YOUNG UPSTARTS SHAKE TRADITIONAs the number of women in the legal profession has increased, there has been a corresponding increase in their desire to band together to protect their interests.The 8000-member Association of Women Solicitors has been promoting the 'professional, business and social interests of women solicitors' since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 first allowed women into the profession.

Such history has its downsides, the main one being a tendency to be assimilated by the establishment.As a reaction, a new group was launched a year ago called Young Women Lawyers, set up by a solicitor and a barrister.

It is open to all female law students and women of less than ten years' qualification working in a legal capacity.

There are now 150 members.Group co-chairwoman Sam James, an assistant solicitor with Wimbledon firm Rowley Ashworth, said it was created out of a feeling that the AWS and the Association of Women Barristers were not catering to the needs of young women on the two sides of the profession.The YWL's research mirrors AWS findings.

A YWL survey last year found that most women lawyers with nine years' experience still had not been made partners, although men with that amount of experience would expect to have reached that level.