Law Times

PAGE 4 NEWS OctOber 26, 2009 • Law times Survey probes secrets of successful women lawyers BY HELEN BURNETT- NICHOLS For Law Times H aving a mentor as a career champion is a key element in the success of many accomplished women in the legal profession, according to the results of a new survey of high-achieving female lawyers. Th rough a work-based be- haviour assessment tool and survey, former McCarthy Té- trault LLP partner Sheena Mac- Askill took a look at whether a group of 22 women lawyers identifi ed as "high performing" by their fi rms had similar ex- periences with regard to work ethic, mentorship, past leader- ship, and competitive sports. MacAskill, who now pro- vides career coaching, transi- tion counselling, and consult- ing services to law fi rms and individual lawyers, also exam- ined whether participants have similar work-based behav- ioural tendencies. Th e target group, from 12 small and large fi rms, in- volved women in their fi fth to eighth year of practice just having entered partnership or on the cusp of doing so. Of the group, half of which was made up of litigation lawyers and the other half made up of corporate law- yers, some were married, others were single, and some had children. An overwhelming number of participants, says Mac- Askill, were said their their champions. mentors In fact, more than 50 per cent reported that their mentors had power to promote them. "Th ey were quite mindful about having selected these champions because they knew if they paired with powerful partners, it was a road to better work, access to clients, the path to partnership," she says. Sheena MacAskill launched her sur- vey after becoming frustrated with talk about women's struggles in the legal profession. Jennifer Conroy Keating, a member of the litigation and dispute resolution practice at Torys LLP, participated in the survey and says she consid- ers it very important to have a mentor whether through a formal or informal process. "I found it very important to have people that I can talk to about work issues or strat- egy or fi le-specifi c questions, as well as career development questions," she says. "It is important to have women in the offi ce that you can look up to; it is important to have role models," she adds. Similarly, survey partici- pant Deborah Glatter, direc- tor of professional develop- ment and student programs at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, explains that "some women can achieve without having a champion, but it's much harder, and pairing an excellent woman lawyer with someone in a position of power in the fi rm is a really good recipe for success." MacAskill adds: "I believe that you can't succeed now in private practice unless you have a cham- pion who's going to help you up the ladder. And these women recognized that early on, most of them, and did have those cham- pions. But I think there's so much more potential out there for part- ners to be career mentors." Results of the study of work- based behavioural tendencies also showed interesting simi- larities among the participants, especially with litigators who all came out as having active work-based traits with most being dominant, driven, com- petitive, and action-oriented people. On the other hand, within Starting from $62.50 per month More value for your money! 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Also emerging was the fact that 80 per cent of participants had signifi cant past leadership ex- perience, including student gov- ernment, university newspapers, debating, and competitive sports. "It's not to say they're not without their struggles, because they certainly are, but this kind of attests to the fact that there are women out there succeeding and what they have in common, if anything," says MacAskill. "I was just getting kind of fatigued hearing all about why women are failing and how the law profession is failing wom- en and women are dropping out by droves. I thought it's so depressing, and wouldn't it be nice to celebrate those who are really succeeding," she adds. Glatter explains that the in- formation coming out of the survey is useful for fi rms in terms of both incoming lawyers and existing lawyers. Firstly, she says, the identifi cation of women who are likely to succeed helps the fi rms know which women to hire. Trends about successful women also help fi rms to guide lawyers along those lines to boost their chances of success. "All of that information is useful to hopefully increase the chances that these women will succeed, become partners, sit on our executive, help run the fi rm in a meaningful way. We want more women at the top so we are anxious to acquire any information that might help us realize that goal," says Glatter. For women lawyers enter- ing the profession, results such as these allow them to position themselves, to see what others have done that has resulted in suc- cess, and to consider whether that path is one available to them at their current fi rm, Glatter notes. Conroy Keating adds that although similar traits were shown among survey partici- pants, there were anomalies that were also useful to see. "It's instructive to know . . . what characteristics they're display- ing, but it's also important to know that you can still be suc- cessful in what you're doing even if you feel that you don't actually have those particular traits." LT

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