Christina Blacklaws, the new President of the Law Society of England and Wales, has declared that Women in Leadership in Law will be a key theme of her presidential year. The timing for this theme is auspicious, coinciding with the #MeToo movement and mandatory gender pay gap reporting.

Ms Blacklaws' "gender agenda" also coincides with the release of the Law Society's Statistics Report for 2017 that shows that whilst there are now more female holders of practising certificates than male, only 28% of senior partners in private practice are female. Furthermore, a significant proportion of those 28% are at small firms or work as sole practicitioners, whilst in 'Big Law' the percentage is even lower than 28%.

Although flexible working opportunities have most definitely had - and continue to have - a significant impact on the number of women in senior partner positions, a recent study on Women in Law, conducted earlier this year by the Law Society, concluded that "unconscious bias" was a bigger culprit.

The glacial pace of progress has led many women like me, who have been in the profession for a very long time, to feel extremely frustrated, explained Ms Blacklaws in a recent interview with the Gazette. She goes on to highlight that women aged 36-40 and older are voting with their feet and leaving the profession, often at the point when they have the skills and experience to become partners in firms; as Ms Blacklaws points out Talent is evenly spread and not specific to gender, race or any other characteristic. So it is clear women are not being promoted and that there is a huge attrition of talent.

Striking a more positive note though, Ms Laws says It does seem that we are ripe to make and embrace step change in our profession. This isn’t just in the interests of female solicitors. It’s not just an issue for 50 per cent of us but for 100 per cent. We have all suffered from the unhelpful and limiting pigeon-holing that has been dominant in our profession for so many years.

For the "Women in Leadership in Law" project to be successful, participation from solicitors of all genders is essential and so the Law Society is working to host and help arrange roundtables in order to gather womens' personal insight and experiences around progression in the profession; Ms Blacklaws has already lead a number of these discussions across the country, and more are being planned.

We'll be sure to bring you updates on the project, as well as news of any roundtables or other events happening in our region, so keep an eye on our website, Twitter feed and LinkedIn page.

You can read more about Christina Blacklaws' agenda for her presidential year in this Gazette article, and more about getting involved in the Women in Leadership in Law project here.