Historic seachange but figures still don't stack up.

It’s nearly 100 since women were first allowed to practice as Solicitors, as a result of the Sex Disqualification Act which was passed in 1919. In 1922, nearly 100 years after the Law Society was founded, Maud Crofts, Carrie Morrison, Mary Pickup and Mary Sykes became the first women to pass their law society examinations. Carrie Morrison finished her articles first and became the first woman to be admitted to the role of solicitor.

Fast forward to 2016 and female solicitor numbers are about to overtake male numbers. It's not as though nobody saw it coming. In the last decade 70% of the growth in practising solicitor numbers has been accounted for by women and currently women make up two-thirds of practising solicitors under the age of 35, with the numbers in the pipelines also continuing to climb. It is, what the Law Gazette describes, "a rapidly feminising solicitors’ profession".

The gender shift is however yet to have a significant impact at partner and business leader level. Sometime in the next 12 months male and female solicitor numbers will be neck and neck but there will still be twice as many male partners in private practice than women. The profession is taking incremental steps to remedy that but according to research we undertook when producing our 2016 Salary and Benefits Benchmarker, a significant proportion of female solicitors are being turned off the prospect of partnership by the lack of work/life balance and flexibility offered in senior level roles and women are more likely to move firms in order to achieve partnership.

Here’s some of the statistics we uncovered when crunching our data

70% of all legal professionals have leadership aspirations

76% of all Solicitors and 67% of all CILEX have leadership aspirations

25% of male Solicitors have no partnership aspirations with a quarter of these citing work/life balance and 4% a lack of flexibility

27% of female Solicitors have no partnership aspirations with a third citing work/life balance and 4% lack of flexibility

In summary just over 1 in 5 female Solicitors believe lack of flexibility and work/life balance is an insurmountable obstacle in the journey to partnership. Just under 1 in 10 male Solicitors feel the same. Women are also more likely to move firms in search of partnership with 35% of all female legal professionals of the belief that they could not achieve their ambitions with their current employer compared to 28% of all men.

The introduction of flexibility and work-life balance into legal culture seems to be the key to bringing more female lawyers through the ranks. Change is afoot but let’s hope we are talking about a decade rather than another 100 years.

Emily Oakes is a London based Senior Recruitment Consultant placing Solicitors into the city's Top 200 law firms.   

Douglas Scott’s Salary and Benefits Benchmarker is the largest and most credible survey of its kind, built on the data provided by 2,800 respondents and amongst them 1,500 female legal professionals.