It's raining men at A&O Shearman (and BigLaw)

Hello and welcome to the Lawyer Podcast. I'm Katrin Griffiths, the Lawyer's Editor-in-Chief. And I'm Christian Smith, the Lawyer's Litigation Editor. In 2015, the lawyer wrote eight candidates for two top roles at Alan and Overy and not one woman. For a law firm committed to that 30% target, it's not a good look. Well, fast forward to 2026, and as the lawyer wrote last week, one female partner being added to A&O Sherman's Refresh Board of Six has left many disappointed with the outcome. Now, you might be thinking it's raining men, but you also might be thinking, "Yeah, gender inequality and professional services we've heard it all before." But the fact is, there is a generation of female leaders coming to the fore in many firms, just not at A&O Sherman. So can we still talk about the glass ceiling for women in big law? Today on the podcast, we are joined by our Deputy Editor-City, Rachel Maloney and our Horizon Editor, Margaret Taylor, to discuss why there is still such an issue at A&O Sherman and across the law more generally. But we will also look at the firms and the leaders who are making a difference. We might even call out some of those places who haven't made a difference at all. Let's dive straight into the A&O Sherman story, Rachel. Could you give us a recap of what the story is and about the issue of female leadership within A&O Sherman? So the story from this month is about their board elections. They had a number of candidates for a number of positions on the board because people had served out their terms. And the lawyer understands that one woman made the cut she was actually on it before so she's been re-elected onto the board which is great. She's called Alice Engelhart and she's in their disputes team. But of the other places that were up for grabs, they did not go to women even though women did put themselves forward and we understand that that's led to quite a lot of disappointment among some of the ranks that some of those roles didn't go to senior women who might have been really really good on the board. So at the moment A&O just has one woman out of nine places on the board but that's a slightly smaller board compared to what it was before so that might change. But why is this interesting? This is interesting because this isn't a new thing at A&O Sherman or Legacy A&O really which is what we've been covering. As you referred to earlier when you introred this podcast I remember Kat's leader from 2015 which was I'm sure she can speak more about soon but what I remember was going into A&O to see their leadership at the time Wimdeong and Andrew Bullheimer and they said to me and we wrote a story about it that they expected their promotions over the following two years to be rubbish for women they did not use the phrase rubbish but that was essentially what it was and they were pretty rubbish as we wrote a story the next year where there was two women out of 20 promotions worldwide that made the cut which is not good and they knew they were not going to be good so they were getting ahead of that which fair play to them. So this isn't a new issue this has been a long one running running underneath the surface that A&O that the leadership at the time wanted to change and they have they have been changes you know so I don't want anyone at A&O to think we're still sort of having a go at them for this but you know they have they have been improvements. But I think it's fair to say Rachel that we're not creating a story out of nothing here they're you know one of the reasons that we picked this up is that actually there was you know the lawyer understands widespread disappointment amongst many of the female candidates for these roles and that you know the fact that there was only one woman who who got elected simply turns the spotlight back onto the process by which women exceed to management positions in professional services firms because the fact is and this is something I wrote back in 2015 which is if you make it a contested election women are much less likely to stand they don't want to put themselves forward I mean actually in the intervening decade it's even harder for women now and I'm not doing an oh whoa is me by the way because these women in professional services are tough cookies and you know they they don't need handholding by any means but the fact is is that out there now is a whole torrent of misogynistic abuse online so this isn't quite the same this is not for political office but there is there is a feeling that if you put your head over the parapet then you know you're going to get judged sometimes actually by your fellow women sometimes and I think there's a sort of a nervousness around that and that has not changed now we understand you know sources close to the firm have indicated that it might be possible that a no sherman would co opt women onto the board because god knows there are plenty of highly capable driven very successful women within a no sherman I suppose the question is is like why did you not do that start with why why have you stood why are you still resorting to contested elections when there should be much more of a sort of a management and a managed leadership process within this and I think this is something that a lot of professional services firms are still wrestling with the idea of a weird Athenian democracy in these gigantic firms because I'm not sure that it works anymore certainly not females females advantage I think it's really really difficult for firms or and it's it's extremely tedious that we're still having these conversations because it is interesting that we're talking about 2015 and what you wrote back then because in 2015 the lawyer also published a really extensive diversity report as part of our UK 200 and in that I remember I've just looked up and I remember writing it at the time we'd had at least 10 years at that point of all manner of diversity and she was right across the profession it was it was a really kind of important issue at that point there'd be all kinds of networks had been women's groups had been targets had been quotas had been all sorts and it had made absolutely no difference whatsoever so I think it's really difficult for firms I don't know how they change it but there was one quote that really stood out for me as part of that looking back on the diversity report it was from Alison Unstead who was head of diversity at a whole good levels at the time and she'd said although some firms at that point did have women in senior positions she said that junior women were looking at them and thinking that they were exceptional and they couldn't be like that and that they needed to be a way of normalizing it but no one's ever found the way of normalizing it is like you have these women in senior positions for a while and then they're not in those positions anymore and it's a bit like oh well we've had that so that's okay like there was a time there were the three women on the Supreme Court on the bench there and now it's like oh well that's been achieved so that's great but now there are two women on the Supreme Court and there are two devids on the Supreme Court. Yeah well let's not even get started on the bar because the bar itself remains astronomically well in large parts astronomically uneven a good number of the top commercial sets well a handful should I say still have fewer than a quarter of their tenants as being female which is extraordinary but if we just look at even at some of the numbers at at at big law firms in the magic circle fresh fields has 30% of their partners as women linked ladies 27% we bring in slaughter and may as well that 28% aino Sherman and Clevard Chant are both down on 25% which is quite interesting given that 11 years ago as we said in the intro they were aiming for 30% so it's still quite a long way away from that the UK200 the top 100 firms the average there of women in partnership is just short of a third and as most people listening will probably know law firms in general have a fairly even split between men and women in the actual lawyer numbers often increasingly in some places that it's actually more women than men. This is nothing new of course you'll be out there listening shaking overhead going yeah we know this but it's just worth pointing out these sort of stark numbers yeah and there's there are certain sort of social factors that law firms can do absolutely nothing about you know the factors that some women you know if if you are a dual career household then you may have me be more apt to you know one of them potentially has more more space if you like more financial space in order to do something else or try different things you know I have to say that if you are running if you're running those stats in house then you would find a disproportionately higher number of very senior women as general counsel so so there is you know it isn't if you're a female lawyer listening to this going you know particularly if you're a younger female lawyer and you're thinking oh my god there's literally you thing there's going to my path is going to be blocked that is absolutely not the case. It had this podcast I did a little bit of a search actually because we are focusing this a bit on A&O but it's in fairness to A&O it does put its board online. I did search for Freshfield's partnership, they call it a partnership council which I believe is the sort of same sort of idea. It's not online. Even their executive committee in full is not online. You just have the three top leaders in there sort of about us leadership page. A, you know, is very transparent on who is actually on their leadership. It's one of the most ethnically diverse of the magic circle. So I want to say that in defensive A&O. Link latest doesn't actually include their partnership council as a list like A&O, handily does either. Clifford Chants does on their partnership council. They have six women and six men. So that's Clifford Chants. So they they put that on there. There's probably a reason why because they have 50/50 split. So I think I think those points are quite interesting to raise to compare those firms. I'd be interested if any of these firms think they do have this on their website. Let me know. Yeah. And Freshfield's of course has just appointed Victoria Sighetti as UK managing partner. And she's I mean she's a very very serious corporate partner and you know with with a lot of internal respect. So there are definitely great female partners at Freshfield. But as I say structurally and organizationally it has a weird, should we say, reticence, not to say secretiveness about these issues. As an aside, I think it's notable how secretive Freshfields is all the time about these issues. If I if I was a female associate of Freshfields, I would be slightly perturbed at the way that the firm guards this information and is not at all transparent and doesn't see it as a duty, a wider civic duty to be transparent for all of its bluster about you know its place in the world etc etc. So I think I think there's a lot of works still to be done there. That's a bit of a change for Freshfields as well because back in the day when we were doing that diversity audit they were kind of one of the better ones. And I think maybe they had more women in senior positions at that time than they do. Because things can change and like even subtle changes can make quite a big change to the whole way of our operates and they're not even aware of it. It's just that kind of the way they think as a group isn't it? I suppose there is a I don't want to get too sort of sidetracked by the point I'm about to make at all but I think that there has also been a fatigue in the last ten years around talk of diversity because it can be quite a numbing kind of debate to a large extent because it is about stats and sometimes ascribing victim hood to women which a lot of women are not very comfortable with. There is a DEI diversity equity and inclusion industry that has slightly grown up and I think the sort of what that has changed a lot in the last few years probably because of Trump where a lot of the DEI initiatives have been have been rolled back. But actually some of them have been a lot of window dressing and some of them have been an awful lot of rhetorical parading around and forgetting about the basics. So you know for example do you have do you do you have proper returning to work policies that get sort of women on maternity leave back into the workplace properly because that is always going to be the major the major stumbling block. And just to add as well care we definitely do see an increasing number of firms with goods back to work policies and who are aware of this issue and and even you know I think the sort of counter to this is I think law in general is increasingly becoming a leader in proficiency and in and across the country really in terms of paternity leave and that obviously allows for more even gender equality there as well that you know a lot of law firms have significantly better paternity leave than the national average. I think there's also a question of actually how women are valued within firms and how the comp systems are skewed. I was talking to a managing partner at a large city firm earlier this week and they were talking that it's a firm like many others that have that has rejigged its comp system. And you know the fact is is that if you have been a so-called big billing partner bringing in a so on and billing a certain number of hours and bringing in so-called lots of fees that that has tended on the whole to favour men. What I think is heartening that is coming up that I'm seeing an awful lot more is that the comp systems are now rewarding those partners who are acting as glue and as cross sellers and this is where quite a lot of women are finding a lot of purchase actually because some some of the women who might be in let's say what might be considered to be ancillary areas like let's say employment or let's say you know financial services regulatory or things things like that that don't have the big private capital billing kind of fees but what they can do is actually make the bridge between different clients and actually create more work and if they are awarded for that then the picture changes quite a lot so quite often it is I will put it back on the firms actually so it isn't yes maternity and potentially very important but it's actually how the women are actually rewarded and how the contribution is measured and I think some of the more some of the more forward thinking firms have managed to do that actually and it is much more about creating that collaboration and creating cross sell and actually identifying it and measuring it and that's that's where the debate starts to get a bit more interesting but controversially well it shouldn't be controversial but you probably need women in the senior positions to recognize that to then put in place those different modes of recognition it's like when I don't know like high-vis clothes they're all made for men because it's only men that wore them in the past and you needed like women to be doing jobs where they needed those clothes for them to say actually these are really uncomfortable let's make one that are designed for women's bodies yeah and it's actually it could be a woman that's done that because of oh god I hate this phrase lived experience but because of the lived experience but actually if you're looking at it from a really hard-headed maximizing all possible cross-selling avenues and possible revenue you would be mad not to look at this so you know but you need the women to the table to discuss it no you're right but the fact I'm talking about doesn't have a female leader actually okay no it really doesn't and and what's interesting but they do have a very sophisticated client program and if they have a civil state client program they can see you know who the who the people are that are actually sort of changing the dial and and quite often when you use that lens it's a little bit more it's a little bit more nuanced a bit more sophisticated we're talking a lot about partners but you know actually this podcast is maybe even more so relevant for the the associates out there who are maybe thinking about partnership because once you're once you've made partner you've made partner what about the associates sort of thinking about it they need sponsors a lot of the time to make it into partnership positions who are their sponsors do their sponsors understand the the stresses and the strains and their lives that they might be going through because I spoke to someone yesterday who's a partner and she was telling me that she has no idea how she managed to do it as a senior associate or how senior associates who often have to devote more of their time to the family and part of their role which isn't something that everyone has to do but often that does fall on the women she's got no idea how they managed to do that because they have to be up back and cool of their instructing partner so their instructing partner has to also understand this so can back when the lawyer first wrote about this issue what did the terrain look like really I mean how many female leaders were they winded winded winded female leaders start coming into the coming to the four in big law well when we first wrote about Aino Sherman you know having no candidates for the managing partner position back in 2015 I think you know that was at a time when there really were quite a lot of female leaders of law firms so you had you know you the sort of in various leadership positions you had women in Herbert Smith Free Hills in what was BLP Bowen Layton Paisner now BCLP Adelshaws CMS Cameron McKenna Hogan-Lovall Stephen Steemson Howard so they they they were already in place now I'm going to say something that may sound like faint praise and it may just sound it may just sound a bit mean but I would say that that generation of leaders they were consensus builders they they were highly efficient they got their jobs because they could absolutely turn up and do the job they had they were operationally excellent they were not I'm gonna say that I would say that of that generation I'm it's not just the people I've mentioned but of others the women that were in in power if you like in the 2010s were on the whole not people that would go out and mass rally the troops you know that would go come on here we go and we're going to articulate this big bold strategy and we've got all of these ideas and blot that they were not that kind of leadership at all they were very they were almost introverted they were quite defensive they were quite protective of of their firm's culture, they did a great job in virtually all aspects by the way. So this is not, but I think the personality types were very distinct from quite a lot of the female leaders that we're going to come and talk about today. And I think, and I can understand why that was, because in order to have been elected or to be appointed to those positions, you couldn't rock the boat back then and you still can't, to a large extent, but you don't want to put your head above the parapet as a female leader and have sometimes controversial opinions that actually might ruffle some of the big dinosaurs within the partnership. So there are very, there are lots of good reasons, but I think in terms of role models, they didn't always role model the idea of boldness and vision. It wasn't female coded in quite the same way. And I think now that is a bit different, you've got, you know, you've got people like Emily Monasterio's Simons, you've got Yvette Ostevazer at Sidley, you know, I mean, those the two, I'm just thinking that really come to mind as very bold, very energetic, not afraid to say what they think. And actually, Joe Farmer, actually, at Lewis Hillkin, another, another, another example. There are a lot of women now who are very happy to speak and to be, oh God, awful another ghastly phrase, their authentic cells. Terrible. But hopefully that you know what I'm getting at, you know, that they're not hiding behind corporate speak. It used to be very difficult talking to those female leaders in the 2010s to get anything out, anything out of them that wasn't, it felt like PR sanctioned and it was very difficult to get a human conversation. That is, I think, not the case with quite a lot of the generation of women leading fans now. Well, can you mention Simons and Sidley there, there can't be it though, right? No, that, no, that isn't just it. But, you know, for example, you know, while got shot or just elected Ramona Ne, and she's a private equity partner, she's a New York based private equity partner, you know, that's a big job replacing Barry Wolf. Barbara Becker, Gibson Done. Barbara Becker is a force of nature. You know, she, she's been run Gibson Done for a couple of years now done really well, Pfizer, Said, you know, she is, well, they call a presiding partner at Kravath actually, which is basically the top job. You know, and then we've got Heather McDevitt, who's at White and Case, who's the chair. I mean, there are other, there are plenty of other people, you know, by the way, I don't, I wouldn't, you know, this is not an exhaustive list, but those are, those are women who are very high profile and who've actually got opinions and I've got a really clear vision for the firm and are very, very directional within their firms too. Of course, as well, there's Natasha Harrison, who was a boy, she's, obviously not at big law, so to speak, any more. She's set up her own firm, Palace Partners, but she is one of the most prominent litigators at the very least, if not more broadly female lawyers in London at the moment. And so in that, in that sense of being a role model very much up there. Yeah, Natasha's, Natasha is interesting because she is an entrepreneur as well in terms of setting up Palace Partners. That's still unusual for women to do that and has made a huge success of it. But in many ways, that's part of what we're talking about here, isn't it? Because it's beyond being, I don't want to say just being a lawyer or just being a partner, but it's, you need to have a certain amount of entrepreneurial spirit to be a leader of some of these firms, because that's what's required. You need to take business management decisions rather than just, I don't mean to say just, but rather than just legal management. Yeah, and I think that's again, what underlines the difference between the 2010s generation of female leaders, where this is pre-COVID, the ascendancy of private capital hadn't been quite as entrenched. This is a world that was predictable relatively. You know where the, or you knew where the risks were, you knew what the threats were, you knew what the opportunities were. And I think now in a world that needs very different kind of leadership. So you're getting different types of personalities that are coming to the fore in big low. So it's obviously extremely frustrating that we are still sitting here having this conversation, and we have to still have it, and we have to keep on at firms and having at home. But I think also we need to acknowledge how far things have moved on, particularly in terms of what Kat was saying about how the generation of female leaders 10 years ago perhaps wouldn't have been as outspoken as the ones that we have now. But also I remember when Frances Murphy was made head of corporate, it's a lot for me. It was a massive, massive deal. We wrote a huge story on it. We did a way to loads of coverage on it and everything. Now, if a woman becomes head of corporate, head of real estate, head of litigation, anywhere, nobody bats an island because of course, and that's exactly as it should be. That is so true, man. So I think we, you do forget that actually the road is not, the road that you've travelled is longer than you think for sure. Yeah. And to bring it back to what we started with, you know, A&O recognising they had a problem with the pipeline, it takes, this doesn't happen quickly. This is like a five year, 10 year project because those partners, well, those lawyers are not partners. They need to be senior enough to get into those positions. So the firms that are, you know, bottom of the UK, 200 for gender diversity right now, are going to stay bottom for quite a few years unless they actually mindfully start doing something about it. And I'm looking at the list right now, if you're wondering, A&O Sherman is there as being one of the ones with under 30% female partnership, according to last year's UK 200, along with liver chance and linked later and slaughter and they and McFarlane's. So, you know, there's other firms down there as well. I'm looking at Osborne Clark and Bird and Bird. So that is not, it's not just the biggest of big law here, you know, you've got firms where, whose cultures are widely acclaimed as being collegiate, collaborative, etc. Burgess Salmon, Osborne Clark, Bird and Bird, Norton Rose, Freaths. You know, now we all know very impressive female partners at those firms, but there aren't that many of them because there's less than 30%. So, you know, it is not confined to the magic circle at all. It is also absolutely endemic at many of these firms. Taylor Westing actually is another really good example. So, it isn't just about the firms that people think are, oh, that's just the high-billing ones and, you know, the sort of the red and tooth and claw ones. It's not. It's different firms as well, who should be called out a little bit more. So Rachel, who's at the bottom? Who's on the naughty step? So, according to the research I did for this based on the top 100 firms in IUK 200, it's HFW. There on the naughty step, HFW. In terms of the female partnership percentages, and then Wigyn was called out. Wigyn, trendy, lovely, made, cuddly media firm Wigyn. And then it was Burgess Salmon and Ebershed's and Wokamoris. And also, 30% has been the goal for a really, really long time. Firms aren't achieving that. That's really not good because that goal should be much higher than 30% now. Like, if it's been 30% for more than 10 years, and firms were putting things in place to achieve that, and they're still not achieving it, really, they need to be shifting the goalposts and if they're not even getting the goal in the first place, they really, really need to be asking why. I just need a quick plug here if I may, Christian. Next week in New York, the Women in Business Law Awards. The research for which has been done by a sister brand, IFLR, but is very much under the Lawyers' Aegis as well now. And the Women in Business Law awards actually is a massive celebration of incredible role models, and that's going to happen in New York. And there's going to be a similar event at the end of June in London. So watch out online for more exciting role models to come out of that. And on that, more positive note, we will leave it there for this episode of the podcast. Thank you very much for listening. We'll be back again in a fortnight. Women to the Barricades. Goodbye. Bye-bye.