Lawyer Monthly - Women In Law Special Edition

LAWYER MONTHLY WOMEN IN LAW EDITION 60 doesn’t impact on a firms’ ability to service its clients, while allowing women to have a better work-life balance that they have more control over. Yet whilst the industry talks about implementing flexible working options, is enough being done to enable better working practices? “Most law firms talk about remote and flexible working, but their culture doesn’t fully embrace the model, with managers watching over their employees and worrying about staff actually working when away from the office. “The cultural acceptance of remote working is just as important as having the technology infrastructure in place to support more agile working practices”, says Dee Sian, Consultant solicitor in the Corporate team at Keystone Law. The lack of flexible working options available has a tangible impact on the ability of women to progress in the industry, with 41% of women in law saying that resistance to flexible working practices by employers has impacted on their career progression. A report by the Law Society also cited unconscious bias against women as a barrier to career progression, however, a huge 49% of respondents highlighted that unacceptable work-life balance demands to reach senior positions was impacting on their ability to progress. Despite these findings, 52% of respondents in the report said that they worked in an organisation where flexible working was now in place 3 . “There’s a greater acceptance of remote working today, across both employers and clients”, commented Zoe Bloom, Family Solicitor at Keystone Law. “My clients don’t expect me to be in an office in London when I take a call; it’s much more accepted that we’re all on the go or working in a range of environments compared with even just a few years ago, which makes it easier for flexible working to be successful.” Outside of providing staff with diverse working options, more agile working enables firms to better communicate with their customers; sharing files on the fly securely and collaborating live on document changes, while video conferencing with teams across the world. Agile working, through a modern, collaborative desktop available on any device, unleashes lawyers from the confines of their physical offices – enabling them to work more dynamically, in a way that better suits their own work and lifestyle preferences, in addition to their clients’ preferences. However, flexible working alone isn’t going to fix the problem. Employment lawyer, Michelle Last, comments: “Flexible working helps to keep more women in the legal industry, but more needs to be done at a wider level to challenge bias in order to help women progress in their careers.” Secure IT In the legal industry, remote working has to be secure. When handling highly sensitive and critical files, lawyers need to be confident that their devices - both in the office and at home - are secured to the highest levels, and that data being shared in the cloud or outside of company networks is protected. More flexible working practices cannot come at the cost of the security of data and firms’ IT systems. For example, Nasstar works with law firms to implement the technology, systems and processes to offer more 45% of women working in law believe that prioritising a work- life balance would jeopardise their success in a firm 2 16% of women thought that showing commitment to their family would negatively affect their career progression possibilities 2