Diversity: Many Good Reasons, Profit Is One

For a long time, lawyering was a masculine domain, but today we are fortunate to have many talented women in the legal profession. However, women lawyers still experience salary inequality and are under-represented in management.

According to the Department of Economics and Social Affairs,^[63] women work longer hours than men, if we take into consideration unpaid work. Women work roughly twice as much or more on domestic chores alone, including meal prepara­tion, cleaning and childcare. These figures are also relevant in developed countries. In Europe, for example, women employed full-time work an extra hour on average per day compared to men. This point clearly shows that women are hard-working, committed, and responsible. In short, women are potential leaders, and yet the gender pay gap is still significant worldwide. Figures vary considerably between industries and geographic regions, but if we focus solely on the legal services sector in Europe, women earn on average 15 % less than men.^[64]

Besides being ethically and objectively unfair, we are missing out not only on women's tenacity and courage but also on their tremendous experience in supporting and sustaining growth if we do not bring them into more executive positions and involve them in key strategic decisions. In a survey of 800 business leaders worldwide, McKinsey & Co, in its Women Matter series,^[65] confirmed that leadership styles and behaviors typically adopted by women are critical for companies to make a difference and perform well in our post-crisis world. According to the American Psychological Association,^[66] women's leadership style tends to be akin to mentoring and coaching, while men's style revolves around command and control. Progressive, diverse, reactive, flexible, smart and therefore sustainable company boards of directors have lively debates and challenge each other, without breaking the harmony of the group.

Making sure that women's voices are heard in the boardroom is a strategic issue. While in many European law firms there is almost a 50:50 split of women and men at the fee earner level,^[67] women are dramatically underrepresented in management and partner level positions. Simply put, quite often there are just no women on the board. Besides appearing obviously unfair to women, this status quo poses a risk to the organization. A study^{[68] [69] published in 2012 revealed that those firms with at least one woman on their board outperformed those with no women by an average of 5 %. Another study11 on Fortune 500 companies found that companies with the highest percentage of women board directors outperformed by 53 % on return on equity, 42 % return on sales and 66 % return on invested capital. This is in addition to the positive corporate image and message sent to the stakeholders, and the benefit (however difficult to quantify) of having a diverse range of thinkers.}

Why should this priority for diversity be any different in the legal profession? These facts call for a mind shift, because gender equality is simply good business. Furthermore, matching diverse client teams is difficult when the law firm has only male partners. Increasingly, large corporates ask for gender equality and diversity and make it a prerequisite to qualify for the panel. Law firms should take this seriously, being aware that it will take some time to change the structure of a firm and prepare for the future—a future that has already started.

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