“All this talk about gender diversity, but we still see firms that don’t focus on men as part of their diversity strategy. For instance, many firms give men as little as one to three days of paternity leave – how can that be?”
Mention to our corporate counsel and leader of our Diversity Committee, Ursula Ben-Hammou.
Published in Latin Lawyer
Written by: Fredrik Karlsson, Deputy Editor, Latin Lawyer.
Latin American law firms are taking steps to promote greater gender equity, but progress at partner level continues to be frustratingly slow and firms must dig deeper to tackle unconscious bias in the talent pipeline in order to rebalance the scales.
When Latin Lawyer first started tracking gender diversity at Latin American law firms nearly a decade ago, our 2013 survey found that 49% of associates at Latin Lawyer 250 were women. In the leadership of the same firms, only a fifth of partner positions were held by female lawyers.
Luckily, the figures have changed since then, but unfortunately not by much.
Latin Lawyer’s 2022 research found that on average Latin Lawyer 250 firms (only Elite and Highly Recommended counted) have an even split between men and women in their overall headcounts. At the partnership level, however, female lawyers make up 25% on average – a scant increase of five percentage points in nine years.
Speculatively, the actual share of female partners in the wider region is likely smaller. Our diversity and inclusion survey targeted the largest and most successful firms across Latin America’s main cities. Outside of these, the reality is another. “If you get out of the big centres in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – the figures are very different,” says BMA Advogados partner Barbara Rosenberg. She references a female mentee she had in Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil, who, among other reasons, had moved from the city’s largest firm to another outfit because there was not a single woman in its partnership and having examples within the firm was important for her.
As partnerships remain male-dominated, it is no big surprise that there are very few women in the top leadership roles at law firms, with only 13% of managing partner positions held by women according to our research.
Similarly, female representation in law firm executive committees is also low. Over a fifth of firms say they have no female representation in their highest governing body, while nearly three quarters (74%) of outfits have less than 40% women in their executive committees.
While law firms continue to lag behind corporate legal departments when it comes to women in leadership positions, the overall picture suggests steady but slow progress, meaning true gender equity may still take some time to achieve.
Most law firms tend to favour organic growth. Reaching greater gender balance in law firm partnerships that way – from a very male-dominated situation – is bound to take time.
Law firms can help drive processes, by implementing policies addressing gender diversity and promoting equal opportunities, but change cannot happen overnight. María Lucila Winschel was elected as the first female executive committee member of Argentine firm Bruchou & Funes de Rioja (at the time named Bruchou, Fernández Madero & Lombardi) earlier this year. She explains that the firm began introducing policies encouraging greater gender diversity some 20 years ago, including motherhood support and flexible working. “My appointment to the executive committee is a sign of those efforts,” Winschel says. Since then, the firm has been finetuning and adding new policies to constantly improve its diversity framework. “You must give policies time to take effect to see the outcome of them,” Winschel adds.
Structural market conditions also impact how quickly firms move towards greater gender diversity and also explain differences in progress between jurisdictions. For example, publicly listed companies tend to have stronger corporate governance structures and higher transparency requirements than private businesses, as they face greater scrutiny from public stakeholders, including investors, shareholders and creditors. This has a trickle-down effect, meaning publicly listed companies must be more transparent in their law firm procurement processes and are more likely pushed by internal and external stakeholders to consider gender diversity when hiring external counsel.
The Mexican stock exchange, BMV, has around 140 companies listed, which compares to some 2,300 companies floating on the B3 stock exchange in São Paulo. “Overall, this may be one reason why Brazil is significantly more advanced than many other Latin American countries when it comes to gender diversity,” says Massa.
A comparison of the average female partner number between the two countries shows that Brazilian firms have 32% female partners, while Mexican firms have 10% – the lowest in the region.
There is no doubt that law firms want to become more diverse. The argument for it is simple and widely researched, more diverse teams bring different perspectives and better solutions. Yet, many obstacles remain, slowing progress down.
To deal with the issue, firms have developed plenty of policies addressing gender diversity over the years. According to our survey, the most widely established policy is flexitime for lawyers. Besides that, nearly half of outfits say they have committees for women, while almost 45% have mentoring programmes in place for female lawyers.
Providing the right training and support for talented lawyers on their way to the partnership is key to prepare them for leadership roles. Given that the age at which many lawyers are considered for a partnership position coincides with the age in which women also tend to start a family, firms must ensure they have a model and culture in place that supports women and men in their dual career and family responsibilities. “At partner level, you start losing female lawyers,” says Gómez-Pinzón partner Natalia García Arenas. “It’s a shame, because you’ve trained them for so long.” In many cases, according to García, it’s likely a combination of family factors and burnouts, making female lawyers think law firms are not for them. “You need women to want to become partners, and as a firm you need the policies to accommodate that,” García argues.
Law firm role models can help facilitate the process. “It gives young lawyers more confidence and also shows that a firm as an institution can have female partners,” says García. As an aspect of that, firms often rely on mentorship programmes to pair up young lawyers with senior counterparts. “As female partners, we try to empower the young female lawyers, making them believe they can climb up to the same roles as us,” says Roberta Gallardo, partner at Arias (El Salvador).
While flexitime is useful, García underscores that firms must be careful not to sanction lawyers that use it. Other female lawyers agree. “I think flexible work is amazing, but we need to be aware of the potential complications it brings, says Ben-Hammou, adding that “it certainly needs to be paired with cultural change at home and at the office, especially in Latin America.” As lawyers return to the office and economies start growing again, firms expect lawyers to be visible and to do the big work again. “But if women are taking the bigger load at home, they cannot perform on the same level as male lawyers. Teamwork at home is also essential for female lawyers to be able to keep growing at the office, and firms play a part in facilitating that change,” Ben-Hammou argues.
Unconscious bias also plays a big role in perpetuating inequality and discrimination in the workplace. “Internal biases at firms – which we all have – have a great impact,” says Ben-Hammou, adding that it is not uncommon for partners to make assumptions that female lawyers want to slow down when they have kids and are therefore not even asked to work on a complicated project. They think they are helping the female lawyer, which may be the case for some, but certainly not for others, Ben-Hammou comments.
Dealing with unconscious bias is no easy task and requires training and awareness. One way in which firms can provide this is through organisation-wide workshops or training sessions particularly tailored for partners in management.
Some policies may also have an indirect positive impact on unconscious bias – paternity leave for example. Firms have been offering extended maternity leave for a long time, but the equivalent for men is a much newer concept. Chilean firm Carey introduced a policy in 2021 that extended the paternity leave from the 5 days protected by law to 30 days in total. The initiative seeks to encourage parental co-responsibility, explains managing partner Jaime Carey. “It helps to send the message that both female and male associates have other responsibilities and thus, the career of women should not be jeopardised because of those responsibilities,” he said.
Additionally, extended paternity leave is about guaranteeing male lawyers the right to also step away from work and spend time with their children. “All this talk about gender diversity, but we still see firms that don’t focus on men as part of their diversity strategy. For instance, many firms give men as little as one to three days of paternity leave – how can that be?” comments Ben-Hammou. “Parental policies are fundamental, for both men and women, and if we don’t change the mindset of people, it will be difficult to see more female attorneys in leadership roles.”
Formal policies targeting gender diversity make a difference, according to lawyers, but they also require regular fine-tuning, and their results take time to see. One way in which to accelerate change, therefore, can be quotas.
Some firms, including Gómez-Pinzón, have earmarked a seat on the executive committee for a female representative. With that strategy, there is always one woman involved when executive committees devise new policies. Additionally, when electing new managing partners, they regularly come from the executive committee or have previous experience from that body. Brazil’s Veirano Advogados changed the structure of its executive committee some years ago to have one mandatory seat for women. Veirano partner Ana Teresa Caetano argues that some specific actions, like this one, may help accelerate gender diversity in firms. Veirano is currently the only Brazilian Elite firm with a female leader. Paula Surerus took on the managing partner role in January 2022, after two years on the firm’s executive committee.
However, quotas remain a controversial issue. “Establishing quotas may damage the reputation of the women that hold senior roles,” says Bruchou’s Winschel, adding that “we want to base promotions on merit.” Fellow Bruchou partner and executive committee member José Bazán argues that it is more important to provide lawyers with the right tools to reach the top and a transparent career track. “Transparency is key in retaining talent and we have developed intelligence for how to create a better environment for evaluations and promotions,” he says.
It is true, transparency around promotions is important to lawyers at law firms. In Latin Lawyer’s parallel diversity and inclusion survey directed at law firm staff, less than 50% of respondents said that their firms displayed transparent promotion processes, while another 23% said their firms have somewhat transparent promotion processes. Law firms should guarantee they have transparent career tracks, or they may face the risk of losing valuable talent.
Law firms clearly still have work to do to reach greater gender diversity in their partnerships, but the key is to be realistic when it comes to setting targets. Instead of establishing a set number of male and female lawyers that must be promoted, it can be easier to start by making sure there is an equal number of male and female lawyers among the candidates. “The best one should obviously be promoted, but I have the intuition that just making female candidates more visible, will make a huge difference both in the promotions themselves and the assessment process,” Ben-Hammou says.
As male partners will likely continue to lead law firms for the near future at least, it is also key for women to have allies among their male colleagues. “We are dependent on male allies for virtually all diversity and inclusion policies that we have put in place,” says González Calvillo’s Massa. In firms with no female seniority, progress in this area is too slow. “Those firms may have many female lawyers that really care about these topics, but they find it hard to get much done,” she explains.
“There is still a lot of road to walk to reach a fairer working environment, we are all learning in the process,” says Ben-Hammou.
