This is the first of three roundtable discussions that are part of The
Australian’s Legal Week initiative. Another part of this initiative is next Friday’s edition of The Australian Legal Review, a magazine devoted to legal affairs that will be free with that day’s newspaper. All three roundtables were filmed before a live audience at the News Corp Theatre in Sydney, and extended videos of all three events will be posted online over coming weeks. Today’s panel members are Thomson Geer chairwoman Loretta Reynolds; associate professors Cathy Sherry and Lyria Bennett Moses from the University of NSW; and Ashurst diversity and inclusion manager Kasey Zun.
What follows is an edited transcript. The discussion began when legal affairs editor CHRIS MERRITT asked Reynolds, who has been chairwoman of her firm for 10 years, what advice she had for aspiring women lawyers. REYNOLDS: The first thing I would say is what I did in my time would not be what any current graduate or young lawyer should experience nor will experience.
I think giving advice to young lawyers today, I would recommend they focus, not only on the law, but look for either a second degree or other business exposure, so that when they come into the law, they’ve got a bit more of a broad way of looking at things.
Clients are very much looking to lawyers to be problem-solvers, to understand their business. So, that’s the very first thing I’d do.
The second thing, I think, is have a very open mind. So the perception that they would probably have from looking to their older colleagues or to their parents who might be lawyers or other people who they have come across, it’s very, very different.
The law is changing at the moment, very quickly, and I think it’s incumbent on educators and law firms to be very transparent with the juniors coming through, about what it does take.
At the moment, I know at Thomson Geer we are being very transparent about what is not only required for each level of promot tion, but what happens when you g get to partnership.
When I went through in the e early 1990s and the early 2000s I had friends who worked for 10 or h 15 years believing if they did the h hard slog, spent all their waking hours at the law firm, that at the end they would be a partner and that that was the be all and end all.
It certainly is not the be all and end all anymore in the way the law is moving but it’s also the case that a lot of those people were misled because that opportunity was not available.
So, I think it applies to all law- yers, women and men, to have an open mind.
MERRITT: So the profession has changed. From the perspective of women lawyers, has it changed enough?
REYNOLDS: Look, it’s changing. So, certainly, the people that I’m seeing get through the law now and are promoted, whether it’s in-house or in a law firm, are those who are focusing on the fundamentals — which is the law, understanding the clients, understanding the business and getting it right.
When I progressed, I was working in the early 90s, so the 90s and the 2000s, and at that time the lawyers who did progress were those who were not time poor.
So success came mostly to men who had the time to golf on Fridays, long lunches, relationship development and the way the legal engagements were handed out at that time, they lent themselves to men who had the time to do that or played the office politics and made sure their name was well known and well networked. So, at the promotion time, that they were well placed.
That’s not the case now. I think now the people that are moving through the law are those men and women who are focusing on fundamentals and that does lend itself to help women. Society says we still usually are
h1 the primary carers. So, we are more time poor more often than our male colleagues. If that means that we can focus on the fundamentals and get ahead, then it’s a good thing, and it is happening more and more.
MERRITT: Kasey, what are your thoughts on this? There are still impediments for women getting ahead … what do you do to get rid of them?
ZUN: One of the things that a lot of the law firms are doing is realising that we, at times, need to move some of our programs away from a gender issue.
So if we look at flexible work, for example, traditionally, and we do still see this across the firms, we have a higher uptake of flexible working with females given the primary care responsibilities.
But if we look at how we promote flexible working, we actually need to do this by looking at this as a workplace issue, rather than a gender issue and I think things like that have really set the scene and are allowing us to move forward.
MERRITT: Cathy, I keep hearing that law students are not aware of the changes that have been taking place in the profession. Is it a problem trying to get them to loosen up and to see the reality of what’s going on? Are they still 10 years behind?
SHERRY: Ten years behind would suggest that they knew something about the profession 10 years ago and I think, and it’s no disrespect to students but you know, they’re young, they don’t know a lot about the profession.
We have, what I think is a problem, in that Australia uses law as the default “I did well on the HSC degree, and I don’t want to or I didn’t get into medicine, and so I’m going to do law”.
I think that’s problematic because it certainly means we have substantial numbers of students whose eyes are not really on the legal profession at all.
And they are doing the degree because they think it’s a good general degree but the reality is a lot of students, even if they are not certain that they want to be lawyers, they will become lawyers and that, I think is really problematic.
They really have not thought about what it means to be a lawyer, what it means to be part of a service industry, and that it may not be quite as glamorous and exciting as they have been led to believe. MERRITT: Go on, really? SHERRY: So, I mean, no disrespect to law, it’s certainly an incredibly important service industry but I think that we, all of us, give the younger generation quite an unrealistic view of what work is.
So, it’s all about jobs being fabulous, it’s fantastic, you’re going to be in New York, you’re going to be in Geneva, it’ll be wonderful. And as we all know, work pays the bills. If it’s interesting that’s fantastic but it isn’t always glamorous. It’s often just a lot of hard work, and that’s OK.
MERRITT: So how do you drum into their heads the reality of legal practice today?
SHERRY: I think we need to have more serious conversations about for whom law is an appropriate degree. As a community, this is, you know, stepping outside of my role as a legal academic … we need to see a lot more people doing science degrees.
Once you lose your scientific literacy, it’s almost impossible to get it back, so I think we should be encouraging people to seek science degrees as general degrees.
That’s not to say I want to discourage people from doing law degrees but I think people need to be more realistic about law and what does constitute a good general degree, and if you’re going to go into law know that it’s quite likely that you will end up being a lawyer, so inform yourself about what it means.
MERRITT: That brings me to the changing nature of legal practice — technology. It’s becoming a critical part of what’s going on in- side of law firms. Are law students across this? Have they picked up on this yet or are they still so focused on commercial law?
BENNETT MOSES: Some students have, so there are always a couple of students in every year at UNSW. There are certainly a few who do realise that this is a new thing and it’s becoming important, particularly in the so-called “New Law” sector.
However, it’s still not as common as for example, a sort of standard vision of what getting a law degree is going to involve.
So for example, when people come into an undergraduate law degree, they have to do a combined degree, so they do a law degree and another degree program.
Most of those students are still doing commerce law, so over 200 roughly a year of those incoming students do commerce law.
And it is important to know business as well so, and so I’m not suggesting no one should, but it’s a very high proportion of the incoming student body, especially when you compare it with the one or two students a year who do computer science law as a combined degree. MERRITT: One or two? BENNETT MOSES: And that is becoming something that is increasingly useful as a combination when you finish.
MERRITT: Explain why. Why computer science? Why is it an integral part of legal education?
BENNETT MOSES: There are two answers to that question. Not everyone should be doing a computer science law degree; that would have exactly the same problem as if everyone does a commerce law degree.
It is important and beneficial because law is a service industry and all of those kinds of industries
Success came mostly to men who had the time to golf on Fridays, long lunches, relationship development . . . That’s not the case now LORETTA REYNOLDS, THOMSON GEER If you automate one element of the process, what do you need to look out for and what is the role of the lawyer at the end of the process? LYRIA BENNETT MOSES, UNIVERSITY OF NSW If we look at how we promote flexible working, we actually need to do this by looking at this as a workplace issue rather than a gender issue KASEY ZUN, ASHURST ‘If you are leaving to go pick up a child or you’re off to a school concert, as a leader, state that and tell your people that is what you’re doing’ KASEY ZUN Probably most young women law students are as unrealistic about [the impact of motherhood] as we were but will probably be better about demanding part-time work CATHY SHERRY, UNIVERSITY OF NSW
are moving towards more of a technologically enabled delivery model because it’s more efficient, therefore cheaper for clients.
So this is where you can bring in innovations, you can bring in efficiencies, you can help design legal platforms that provide legal services to clients, whether that is through smart contracts, blockchain, whether it is through expert systems and so forth with the expertise in both make that technology happen but also the law behind it that backs it up.
MERRITT: It sounds like there are some parts of technology, if you like, that can’t be separated from the legal function while there are others that can. Other things that you can, quite easily, send off to the IT department but there are some issues that a lawyer with an IT, or computer science background would be able to analyse properly.
BENNETT MOSES: Absolutely, and I think there are more and more problems, and this is just in general — this is not just about law, that really require you to be able to see things from more than one perspective to answer the problem.
So if you are thinking about something like, what is the most effective way to, say one is doing a litigation, what is the most effective and efficient way to do these processes?
You need to understand the processes and what they involve, the legal rules around those processes but then also be able to see what can be automated and what can’t.
What are the limits of the systems that you build? So if you do automate one element of the process, what do you need to look out for and what is the role of the lawyer at the end of that process?
What is the system doing for you and what is it not doing? What do you still need to check manually? Doing that properly and well involves expertise in both.
MERRITT: Loretta, is this what you are seeing at the coalface, that issues are merging between law and technology?
REYNOLDS: I think in the high-volume repeat work, technology and law are very much converging. Day to day, perhaps not in the specialist areas, tax, M&A.
That said, even in those areas the ability to use the technology we have got currently is itself an amazing tool.
So we have found, yes, we are investing time and money into what we just talked about but we are also investing a lot of time and money in educating all of our staff on how to use the technology that they already have.
MERRITT: Kasey, it sounds like you are in 100 per cent agreement here.
ZUN: I think yes, I think we need to be embracing new technologies and that comes from any industry as well but we also need to be responding to what our clients need and I think technology allows us to do that.
MERRITT: Sounds like a lot of the changes going on in the profession are being driven, not with a whip by general counsel, but they are encouraging and asking and prodding. Would that be right?
REYNOLDS: I just think the clients are absolutely fabulous at the moment. It’s hard to bring about change and when there’s a little bit of a crisis our clients are demanding it, the staff and partners want to change.
And that’s wonderful, to have that challenge, to be able to respond to, is a dream come true. But they are also doing things like drug and alcohol testing, so the boozy lunch is off the agenda now and that’s good for women who are time poor and don’t have the afternoon to be able to whittle it away at the pub or the golf club.
They are also, you know if you get an opportunity to do a proposal and you put three men forward, it’s not uncommon that the client will ring up and say: “We’re looking for a different mix to provide this service, we want a woman among the three,” or, “Can you provide the amount of diversity among the barristers that you have briefed in the last quarter.”
You know “Have you audited your accounts? Are you financially stable?” They are all really good questions that if you are in a position, like we are, to be able to respond to, it’s a fabulous opportunity.
MERRITT: Now, why? Why are they asking that? I think I know the answer, but from your perspective, tell me about that.
REYNOLDS: The law is changing; you have the accounting firms, which are obviously very well-funded, going into the legal industry; you have boutique law firms popping up who have specialist skills who are perhaps not as well funded or don’t have the ability to have the same insurance.
You’ve got rescue mergers and other changes happening in the industry. So clients who are more discerning about the quality of the legal provider and what happens if something does go wrong are naturally asking all the questions, given the changes, but they are also, probably in this climate, risk averse.
I think that’s a good thing for the clients and therefore the industry will respond.
MERRITT: Now for the two academics on the panel here: what’s the expectation of female law students? Are they expecting to just zoom ahead or are they aware that there are still some remaining impediments to careers in the law?
SHERRY: I suspect they are not aware of perhaps the single most significant factor and that is the reality of when they have children. And there is a question about how much you can educate young women about that, particularly in the society where there are fewer and fewer children.
So most people won’t have seen little brothers and sisters raised, they won’t have seen babies born around them, they don’t really have any idea about what it means to have a baby who needs to be cared for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, basically until they’re five and they go to school. And what are you going to do about that time, and work?
I think probably most young women law students are as unrealistic about that as we were, and that hasn’t changed.
I think they will probably be better than we are about demanding part-time work. A lot of young women lawyers are, unlike the generation that was slightly older than me who thought, “Well, if I work until 40 no one will notice I’ve had a baby.”
And then people worked out, and now people do notice that, so I think there’s a lot of young women lawyers having babies in their late 20s thinking, “Well, it’s going to affect me no matter what, I might as well do it now.”
But they are going to face exactly the same challenges we did. And the same challenges of sharing care, so to me, getting a nanny to care for your children 18 hours a day, or whatever is not progress as far as I’m concerned.
It’s getting men to work parttime so we’re not forever competing against people we can’t compete with, because we’re not working the way they do and I don’t think the legal profession has made much headway with that.
BENNETT MOSES: I definitely agree, that I don’t think any people, when they’re choosing what career to pursue, when they’re choosing what to study at university or while they’re studying, have really thought about, “Oh, I’m going to have children one day, how does my choice impact on my ability to do that.”
I would say though, at law school itself, it’s a majority female faculty, both genders are very well represented at all levels of the faculty. So in that sense, they are not really challenged with the kind of environments that one can face later.
Where they are challenged, and going back to the point I raised earlier, is in more of the technical degrees. So, it’s really in faculties like engineering, degrees like computer science where we need women to be told, as much as boys are, and men are: “This is something you can do; this is something you can pursue; and perhaps
should think about pursuing alongside a law degree.”
MERRITT: Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
BENNETT MOSES: I’m an optimist. I think this is definitely something that we can fix and the message we can tell. I studied mathematics. I was the only girl doing a maths honours degree at the time. Now, there’s a few more.
So it’s definitely possible. But, it’s about the messages they are receiving.
REYNOLDS: I see some of our male solicitors and our male partners working part-time to be able to share the family responsibilities and absolutely love doing it.
MERRITT: What about at Ashurst?
ZUN: I absolutely agree. We have a number of partners working part-time, on flexible work arrangements and I think for the firms, it’s about having a responsibility to make sure we’re role-modelling those behaviours.
If you are leaving the office and you need to go pick up a child or you’re off to a school concert, actually as a leader, state that and tell your people that is what you’re doing.
Breaking down the permission culture and setting the expectation that it is actually OK to do this, and going back to flexible work, it’s about removing gender out of it and this is actually as a parent, a responsibility in the way that we are living our lives now.
MERRITT: So it’s becoming more common for men as well?
ZUN: I think so. It’s still very slow, I would say, progress at the moment. But we are seeing more and more.
We are trying to promote men within our firm who are working flexibly, who are working parttime. We are asking them to share their stories, and really sort of get those messages out there that this is happening and we should be moving along with this.
MERRITT: I keep coming back to why. Why do this? Is it simply to put an end to the huge wastage rate when well-trained young lawyers, late 20s, early 30s bail out. Is it aimed at reducing the wastage rate and retaining those people and saving that money? Or are there other factors?
ZUN: Ultimately, it’s about being able to attract and retain the best available talent, both male and female.
We want to make sure that with our females they are being able to progress, that we are getting rid of any barriers, but also for our males, they could have their partner, we don’t know what they’re doing for work, they could be in law firms as well, they could be in other, highdemand industries.
I think we are seeing a transition where people are really sharing that care, and we need to make sure that as a firm we are being able to respond to that and have support programs in place to allow that to happen.
MERRITT: So the expectations of those law students might not be misplaced? It sounds like there might be a brighter future out there.
BENNETT MOSES: Indeed. I think that the point is they have not necessarily thought it through. So I don’t think if you go to someone in their early 20s when they are choosing where to go, some of them will, but there’s not many who will sort of think, ‘OK what sort of career do I want, given I’m going to need this flexibility later’.
I think when you have children, that’s when you realise that you need the flexibility.
