Dialogue: Steven Price

It's still an uphill struggle for women in top legal firms

Linda always knew she would be a lawyer. She grew up watching LA Law, and though she knew law probably wouldn't be quite that sexy, it was clearly all about justice and fairness.

She worked hard at law school, earning high marks and the ultimate reward: interviews with big-name law firms. The partners who interviewed her were interested in her prize for commercial law. But they were also interested in something else.

"Do you expect to get married soon?" they asked. "When do you plan to have children?"

One even asked what kind of family planning she used. (Later, she heard that one of the big firms explored the possibility of requiring new partners to sign contracts agreeing not to have children.) Linda knew these questions were illegal, but what was she going to say? She wanted a job.

She bit her tongue, and was hired by one of the top firms. She threw herself into the rather unglamorous grunt-work of a first-year lawyer: preparing lists of documents, writing opinions about obscure corners of the law, trotting down to court to seek adjournments on bankruptcy files.

If she put in the hard yards, she was sure, she would win the partners' trust and be given more responsibility and better work.

But she wasn't entirely comfortable at work. She was rarely allowed to attend meetings with clients, and when she did, her supervising partner would grin at them and say: "We hired her for her legs."

Some of the clients would eye her suspiciously. Others would make a grand show of chivalrously pulling out her chair for her or opening doors, which always made her feel odd. She didn't want any special treatment here. She'd rather they invited her to business lunches, as they did with the male lawyers.

Occasionally, she was taken to lunch at the men's clubs. Before 1993, when they opened up the membership to women, she could attend only as an invited guest.

Sometimes at work, or in court, she felt like an invited guest of the legal profession. Several times, she was mistaken for a secretary. One judge called her "Missie." Once, when she was in court as a junior in an important case where all the lawyers happened to be women, another lawyer wandering past asked: "Who's appearing in this case?"

Although Linda's strength was commercial law, family-law files would invariably end up on her desk, as if they would naturally suit her. She gritted her teeth and did the work. You don't complain or protest, she knew. You do what you're assigned, you do it promptly and competently, and you make yourself visible putting in long hours.

That way, you'll be seen as "partnership material." She hoped. Actually, Linda wasn't exactly sure how someone became a partner. No one ever explained it to her.

Would someone tap her on the shoulder one happy day? Was she on the right track? Did the partners think she was compatible with them?

To be honest, she wasn't sure they were compatible with her. She didn't like the way some of them treated their secretaries, sometimes hounding or criticising them until they cried. She didn't like the way they made jokes about clients' breasts.

She was distraught when one tried to hit on her, hinting it would be good for her career prospects. (She doubted it. When relationships bloomed in-house, it was never the man who left the firm.)

She turned him down, and he never gave her any more work. She thought about complaining. Career-limiting behaviour, a friend warned.

She began to feel dishonest promoting her firm at graduate-recruitment events.

When she got married and pregnant, Linda knew she'd have to prove that her work wasn't affected. She took little maternity leave. She felt guilty taking time off to care for the children when they were sick. Life was a swirl of housework, ferrying the children around, and being available for clients.

Part-time work would be "incompatible with the job," partners told her. She wished she had a wife to do the washing.

Finally, she left. It felt like a defeat, but also a relief. What it did not feel like was a choice.

"Linda" is fictitious but her experiences are not. All are based on stories told by women lawyers in New Zealand over the past decade.

Although women have been admitted to the bar in roughly equal numbers to men since 1986, only about one law-firm partner in 10 is female.

Comments: sxprice@hotmail.com