International Women’s Day in the Legal Profession

By Sonia Jassi.

Reading time: four minutes

International Women’s Day (IWD) is approaching on Friday 8 March 2024. The House of Lords will hold a debate, with this year’s theme being ‘Investing in women and inspiring inclusion’.

Some of the recommended areas for action to improve include:

• Recruiting, retaining, and developing female talent.
• Designing and building infrastructure meeting the needs of women and girls.

Why is this theme relevant to the legal profession?

In 2021, the Bar Standards Board found that there is ‘a consistent trend of female barristers leaving practice indefinitely after the early stages of their career in greater proportions of male barristers’. The two areas focused on at IWD 2024 are important for the legal profession to consider when improving the retention and development of female lawyers’ progression in practice.

How is the legal profession attempting to implement this?

Considering career breaks at the Bar, the Bar Council published a guide to set out the minimum standards and requirements related to Maternity and Parental Leave. The guide encourages barristers’ chambers to adopt a good and better practice by providing a model policy to be implemented by chambers to support parents at the Bar. This is beneficial as the policy encourages sets to keep in contact with the pregnant barrister and suggests arrangements to support barristers on Maternity Leave when returning to work after a long period of time to create a smooth transition.

Another reason that may infringe on recruitment of female talent could be that legal professional services are not transparent about their commitment to inclusion. To eliminate this on the ‘face of it’, the Bar Council encourages legal service providers to sign up to the Women in Law Pledge. This pledge is a commitment to supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the profession, setting targets about gender equality and diversity, and tracking this progress to reflect on growth. Currently, 27 sets have pledged their commitment.

How are outside organisations encouraging inclusion for female lawyers?

Briefed offers training solutions to various sectors including in the legal profession. Briefed works with professional regulations, Bar Councils, and law societies and has so far certified over 3,000 barristers. In the legal profession, some of their training certifications include:

• Menopause in the Workplace;
• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Accreditation; and 
• Unconscious Bias Training. 

Their clients include chambers such as:

• Serle Court;
• 5 Paper Buildings;
• 42 Bedford Row; and 
• St Mary’s Chambers. 

Encouraging barristers at chambers to complete these types of training modules could encourage an inclusive environment for females by allowing female lawyers to be reassured that their workplace is compliant and in support of removing barriers to females’ career trajectory.

Platforms such as Her Bar are available to support female barristers during their career. Her Bar was founded by barristers Nasreen Shah and Rachel Bale. It offers to create a community of women who can receive support and guidance on similar issues founded on sharing the same profession. Their website boasts an insightful blog covering topics such as career progression and women’s issues, and they host events for ‘members’ such as their recent event supporting newly qualified barristers. Events such as this are great to enable female barristers at the start of their career to not be deterred by issues they may face, and instead be able to speak on their concerns entering the profession.

Finally

We can see that most legal service providers are becoming more aware of the barriers faced by female lawyers, and how they might be able to support or address these. International Women’s Day is celebrated annually, but the progression of females within law is an ongoing journey, and there are steps being taken towards a more inclusive future.