5 Reasons Law Firms Should Care About Gender Equity
The Current Gender Gap
The legal industry has the largest gender pay gap. In general, men in the legal field earn on average 59% more than women. From a purely statistical viewpoint, this can be explained in part by the number of women lawyers leaving the profession mid-career compared to men at a ratio of 73:27.
I’ve heard law firm leaders explain that people (read: women) who don’t want to bill 2,000+ hours a year can’t expect to stay in the profession, much less make partnership. They reason that law is a demanding profession and those who don’t want to meet those demands will naturally leave; the logical conclusion being that there is nothing to be done. That is not only untrue, it is bad business. Consider this:
Enhanced Decision Making
When women and other underrepresented people are present, they bring their diverse perspectives. This leads to greater innovation and creative problem-solving.
Greater Client Loyalty
Clients recognize that diversity leads to better solutions to their legal problems. They also appreciate firms that demonstrate their commitment to equity and inclusion and reward them with their loyalty.
Keeping Top Talent
I already mentioned that women are almost 3 times as likely to leave mid-career than men. Attrition not only costs law firms money, they can’t leverage the full potential of their underrepresented talent.
Oh, and Gender Equity is Profitable Too.
Law firms should care about gender equity because as a matter of fairness and justice. There is also a more pragmatic reason to care — gender diversity improves financial performance.
One study demonstrated that diversity can significantly enhance a firm’s market position. Not only do diverse clients want a diverse team of lawyers, they are also willing to set-aside the institutional relationship and hire a competitor. Inclusive businesses in general are 70% more likely to capture new markets.
Firms with greater gender diversity, especially among partners and leadership, often outperform their less diverse competitors. Studies across industries also found value in gender equity. McKinsey reported that gender diverse businesses were more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean.
Cultivating Gender Equity
Now that you know why, let’s talk about how. I believe law firms should approach gender equity through the lens of human-centered design. To discover solutions that work for women and the law firms they work for, firms should move through 5 stages, flowing back and forth as needed.
Empathy and Discovery
Law firms are made of people with their own agendas, goals, needs, and motivations. Successful gender equity initiatives require firms to develop a deep understanding of everyone impacted. This is not limited to women attorneys. Firms must also seek to understand the perspectives of others in the firm to form a more wholistic view.
This helps you understand the issues better. Taking this time upfront actually saves time and money by making sure solutions are tailored to real needs. No one wants to spend time solving the wrong problem.
Define and Align
Empathy work reveals the gender-based challenges women in your firm face. From here, we identify the challenges that are the most pressing to solve. We’re not aligning on how to solve them (yet), we’re aligning on what to focus on first.
Next, be sure to define the challenge in a way that reveals the root cause. We want to use language that opens up the space for creative solutions.
Ideate and Innovate
This is my favorite stage because ideation sessions can be a lot of fun. It’s the moment for uninhibited creativity. Forget logic and reasoned analysis and choose quantity over quality. Even the wildest idea can spark new ways of thinking and lead to effective solutions.
Try This: Defining the Problem
Here are some pairs of problem definitions that limit and expand the scope for solutions.
We need more chairs.
We need more ways to rest off our feet.
Clients keep calling even when nothing is happening with their matter.
How can we set expectations for clients during their matter?
Or,
Can we automate client updates when there haven’t been changes in their matters?
How can we get more women to serve on the Executive Committee?
How can we support women lawyers throughout their career so they remain long enough to fill leadership roles?
Evaluate and Experiment
Take your list of ideas and decide which are the most promising. Evaluate the ideas on the effort required and the impact they might have. Look for ideas in the “sweet spot” — low effort and high impact. Experiment with those first.
Experimenting may seem difficult at first. But you don’t need to test every part of the idea. Instead, look for a key aspect or underlying condition that you can test. This could be a draft of a policy or a pilot program. Design the experiment to give you feedback on the key parts. The thing to remember is that it is ok, desirable even, to “fail fast.”
Reflect and Refine
This stage is crucial. It fits after experimentation, certainly, but it also works after any other stage. For example, when you’ve defined the problem review your definition with those who helped you understand the problem and see if it needs to be refined.
You must take the information learned from your experiment(s) and and allow that knowledge to guide the next iteration. And there will be a next iteration. This approach works because no design is ever really final.
Applying this 5-part approach will help you design solutions to gender equity that reflect your law firm’s unique needs, mission, and goals.
Let’s design a more equitable profession, together.
If you want to learn more about this approach, sign up to receive a free copy of the Gender Equity Playbook.