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In-house – the better place for female lawyers?

At the beginning of the year the editor of Legal Week wrote a blog highlighting the age old issue of women remaining in the law – or not as the case may be! http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/blog-post/1588103/worth-crack-glass-ceiling Alex Novarese highlights that ‘by most estimates, more than half of the lawyers entering the profession are women, but a commercial law firm that manages to have a 20% female partnership is reckoned to be doing pretty well - over 40% and your managing partner becomes an automatic pundit on female empowerment.’

So are females' chances better served working in-house?

The evidence certainly seems to confirm that they are. A quick analyses of the mix between the sexes at the Head of Legal level in organisations across the regions that BCL Legal serve, (North East, Yorkshire, North West, the Midlands and Home Counties) confirms that the female/ male split is very close to the 50:50 mark.

So this poses the following questions about why the split is more equal in-house.

Are female lawyers more attracted to the role of an in-house lawyer compared to a comparable private practice job?
Are organisations more open to true flexible working patterns and therefore attract more females?
Do females make ‘better’ in-house lawyers and therefore more are likely to make it to the top?
Why are there more males at partner level in private practice? Are law firms an unattractive work place for a large number of females?

One aspect that we at BCL Legal have observed is that females make the decision to move in-house at an earlier stage in their career than males.