Case study: Paths to progress

Embracing flexible-working patterns is one way firms can adapt their practices to see more female lawyers remain and move into partnership. Addleshaw Goddard undertook a wide-ranging review of female-retention policies while also embarking on a practice ‘pathfinder’ project.

By Monica Burch, head of diversity, Addleshaw Goddard

A client comes to you with a problem. The marketplace in which it operates is hugely competitive when it comes to the attraction and retention of talented people. The cost of training an individual only to then have to recruit a replacement costs around £200,000 per person. Your client employs over 50 per cent of women at graduate entry level, but only 20 per cent (or one) make partner. Your client’s business is losing its female employees at around four to five years in, when individuals are typically at their most profitable and promising. Current demographics show that some 57 per cent of first-class degrees are awarded to women, and women will make up the fastest growing section of the working population by 2010. Finally your client is particularly concerned that its own clients now expect it to detail what it is doing about diversity in general, including the promotion of women, as part of its pitching and new-work processes. Your client is afraid the UK will follow the US – where general counsel from 500 companies (many of them clients to die for) issued a call to action that threatened to take work away from firms who could not demonstrate a meaningful commitment to diversity.

Sound familiar? It should do to law firms. These were all factors in Addleshaw Goddard deciding to actively review the recruitment and retention of female lawyers and staff. Very broadly, this was the business case and imperative.

A team of HR professionals and female partners was formed at the firm in summer 2005. At the time the call for law firms to be more diverse had not yet been made by the GC100. While diversity was an increasingly common question in pitch information, it was not as high profile a concern as it is today.

Addleshaw Goddard is a new firm – four years old on 1 May and highly aspirational. There is a culture of innovation and a willingness to be differentiated in the legal marketplace, which continues to make it easier to achieve change and for wider cultural change to take grip. While we would all acknowledge there is a lot we can do better, the climate remains a farsighted one.

The review process

The team we brought together for the review was deliberately exclusively female. While we wanted to broaden the group – and the areas of diversity to improve – we also wanted to achieve some real change. It was thought that taking one aspect for one year, and trying to achieve some tangible steps, was important. The senior partner and managing partner were very much in favour of the initiative and very verbal about it, while I am also on the firm’s governance board, which meant we were seen as having approval from the top of the firm,. The driver was seen as coming from, and having been approved by, the leadership.

The team began by inviting female associates to a series of workshops, designed to allow them to discuss career concerns and how they might be improved. The workshops were well attended, the atmosphere extremely positive, and the feedback informative and well thought through. The very strong message was that most, if not all, women are strongly opposed to positive discrimination and want to achieve on their own merits. Our focus therefore remains on providing an environment of opportunity.

The firm’s flexible-working policies were already well developed by a highly professional HR team, but it was clear that the extent and variety of flexible-working patterns were not publicly available in one place. There were already a number of examples of promotion to partner while women were on maternity leave, and while candidates were working flexibly as associates, as well as promotion from associate through to equity partnership on this model. We therefore pulled together (and put in one place) the different ways in which people worked in the firm (and not just women, two of our male partners work flexibly). This made it easier for associates and employees to go to one place and look at patterns of working when thinking about the issue for themselves. It also gave ‘permission’ to do this. Dialogue was started with divisional heads to discuss common approaches to flexible-working requests and what might work for different specialisms. The published policy also clarified that flexible-working requests would be considered regardless of personal circumstances and gender – in other words not only for childcare reasons. A club was also started for prospective parents and ‘returners’ from maternity leave, and again, feedback led to greater clarification, so that effort was made to keep those on maternity leave engaged, and in the loop, to the extent the individual wanted and expected.

Dialogue was also picked up with business-development teams in terms of thinking about marketing. Feedback indicated that the client activities organised were either very male (e.g. rugby matches) or female (such as shopping evenings) with little available for both genders. This was important for our associates’ business-development skills, but also for the increasingly mixed legal teams of in-house lawyers where we would not want to exclude, or put off, prospective guests by the nature of the offering. We also talked and listened a great deal to other organisations, many other professional-services firms outside the legal profession. There was an openness and a willingness to share ideas and best practice that was a tremendous help internally.

Factors

There are three very important factors that have also helped.

The first, in early 2006, was when Mark Harding, then head of the GC100, clearly made the point that the expectation of clients was that their law firms would become more diverse and take active steps to do so. This coincided with a significant number of client requests on pitches, and more generally about diversity policies. Client partners started calling up to ask what we were doing and get background information on our initiatives.

Secondly, Addleshaw’s corporate department is largely comprised of male partners. There are some extremely able associates, male and female, however, and the department wanted to think about how to retain people and respond to their clear wishes. One of the HR professionals on the diversity team, Helen Jones, is also HR manager for corporate, and she brought in many of the concepts the team had been discussing. The head of corporate, Paul Devitt, was also very much in favour and was willing to start a dialogue. Our corporate partners then decided to sponsor a ‘pathfinder’ project, embraced enthusiastically by a group of 15 partners, associates, trainees and secretaries, involving working differently – either at home, by giving up traditional office space, or by working in different offices or client offices. This project, and the fact it is the corporate department that has undertaken it, has really made a difference to perception in the firm, and is being extended to other groups and teams.

The third factor was the results of a firm-wide opinion survey with confidential feedback, made public in September 2006. The biggest issue raised by associates was a desire for more flexible working, regardless of gender, department or seniority.

Client service is of great importance to all at the firm, and the concerns about different ways of working are how they may impact this. There is also, of course, a very natural personal element, in a busy professional life, about how it will impact the individual and the wider team. Service delivery is paramount, but within that the emphasis is on trust, on flexibility generally, and on communication with the whole team so the work/life balance and pressures of all are acknowledged.

The firm is not perfect, and we are constantly looking for ways to work better and be a better business. We are, however, making real efforts to retain and attract women and there is a tangible satisfaction when we attract new recruits, including partners, who come to us because they have heard that they can work in better ways and balance their lives better. We have also had a legal director role since 2002 – an alternative to partnership that does not preclude it. The role acknowledges seniority and sits alongside that of partner.

Monitoring statistics

As high as 13.5 per cent of the staff at Addleshaw currently have formal flexible (part-time) work patterns. Some 90 per cent of female employees who commenced a maternity-leave period in 2005 returned to work for the firm in 2006 – 91 per cent of fee-earners and 89 per cent of support staff. At the same time we have become involved in a number of initiatives and organisations that support and encourage flexible working, including:

Working Families. The UK’s leading work-life balance organisation, whose aim is to work with both parents/carers and employers to encourage a better work/life balance. Addleshaw was selected as a finalist for the Working Families Innovation Award 2006 and received a Special Commendation for seeking to break the mould of the traditional career path in the legal profession;
Successful inclusion in The Times’ ‘50 Places Where Women Want to Work’ saw us listed as the only law firm, with part of the submission looking at our approach to flexible working;
Exemplar Employers. A government-backed initiative that looks at how organisations can creatively make the most of female talent. We are taking part specifically to support flexibility for those returning to work. Addleshaw Goddard and Clifford Chance are the only law firms taking part.

Where are we now?

To summarise:

Flexible working is now available to all regardless of the role performed or length of service;
In addition to a shorter working week, we have a number of successful arrangements in place across the firm, including compressed hours; job sharing; annualised hours (whereby an annual number of hours is set but with the pattern for working these flexible – e.g. school holidays); term-time working; and home working;
There is no standard list of options available, but rather each situation is examined individually;
A comprehensive review of our ‘family-friendly’ policies led to the creation of a new parent’s network, offering support, practical advice and discounts to various publications/websites for both expectant and new parents.
There is a ‘buy and sell’ holiday policy (five days) and sabbatical policy (12 weeks unpaid sabbatical available to all staff who have worked for three years);
Technology is more widely available to help people work more flexibly;
The legal director role has developed since 2002 and is viewed as a meaningful career alternative to partnership;
The ‘pathfinder’ pilot has given 15 people from different roles the opportunity to test different ways of working. Full IT support has been provided with full and honest feedback encouraged.

Building on the experience of this first working team on female attraction and retention, we now also have teams focusing on black and ethnic minority recruitment and retention, sexual orientation, disability, and age – with a diversity steering group ensuring co-ordination and overview. The aim is to be an inclusive place to work, attracting talented people and giving all the same opportunities to succeed.

Monica Burch is head of diversity at Addleshaw Goddard. She can be contacted at monica.burch@addleshawgoddard.com