Supreme Court Justice Louise Charron told the Women Lawyers’ Symposium Feb. 5 that “control“ has been her key to work/life balance.  [Photo by Cristin Schmitz for The Lawyers Weekly] Click here to see full sized version.

Supreme Court Justice Louise Charron says women lawyers would stick around more if law firms demanded less “face time” and offered them more flexible and predictable working arrangements.

Senior partners should consider whether the exodus of women from law firms is “often self-generated” by the firms themselves, suggested the soft-spoken former prosecutor and trial judge.

“Ask yourself, is it necessary to operate in the way where, without notice, we are [told we are] meeting tomorrow at 7 a.m.?,” she asked lawyers attending a Feb. 5 symposium on women in private practice that was co-sponsored by the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) and the Carleton County Law Association.

Justice Charron acknowledged that legal practice sometimes requires last-minute meetings. “But it’s the uncertainty of these demands for face time that make it impossible to jive with family responsibilities,” said the parent of three sons. “Try to get, at the last moment, a babysitter for seven o’clock in the morning.”

The judge highlighted the experience a lawyer she knows who was involved in a huge transaction. Two firms worked around the clock, rolling out cots and sleeping in two-hour shifts so they could negotiate 24/7.

“I thought I was hearing the script for a horror movie,” Justice Charron said. “So I told her ‘Good lord, what was the deadline?’ And she tells me, ‘there was no deadline. It made no difference if we concluded our negotiations next Monday or in two weeks.’” The two firms had simply chosen to operate in that way.

“I think we can all ask ourselves ‘Is it necessary to operate the way we do?’” the judge said. “A lot of the problems are self-generated, I have no doubt.”

Self-generated or not, women’s flight from private practice is worrying legal regulators across Canada, particularly with the aging of the Bar and the declining number of practitioners outside major city centres.

The British Columbia Law Society’s Retention of Women Task Force reported last year that women still make up only 34 per cent of all practising lawyers in B.C., and just 29 per cent of lawyers in full-time practice. Preserving family life is the reason most women say they prefer to work in government, academia or as in-house counsel.

But Ontario Bencher Beth Symes of Toronto’s Symes & Street warned the female audience that women who opt to leave the legal profession for much longer than their maternity leaves appear to be paying a high price by damaging their careers.

“Don’t leave — it is unbelievably difficult to get back,” advised Symes, who co-chairs an LSUC working group looking at what happens to lawyers who want to resume practice after leaving law for five years or more (usually for family reasons.)

The experiences reported so far by female lawyers in Toronto, Ottawa and London, Ont., suggest that women should carefully consider alternatives to completely opting out of the profession, Symes said.

“What are our findings to date? This starts very pessimistically. There is no question the road back is very difficult. Why? A whole range of issues, but the most profound thing may be...the total lack of confidence in ourselves: [Women believe] ‘I’ll never make it. I’ll never get back on the ladder, or back on the treadmill.’ ”

Symes said women who want to return to practice usually do so for financial reasons, often due to a life change such as divorce or the death of their spouses. These lawyers usually want, or need, to return to a new area of practice. They must usually acquire new legal and technological skills.

Law firms have not been lining up to hire mid-career female lawyers, Symes said, calling the market “not great.” “It ranges from reluctance to take a chance on an individual woman to outright hostility,” she remarked. Law firm managers think, “ ‘Look, there is a very large pool of talented lawyers. Why would I have to bother with her?’ or ‘They’ve already made their decision or their choice once in their life, and they chose family over law. Why would I take a chance?’ ”

Symes called it “a very challenging issue” for the Bar. “There are large numbers of women who have left the profession altogether and who now seek to come back. Whether or not we will be able to make a sea change in attitudes and perceptions to assist them to get back on to the road to the profession remains an outstanding issue.”

Justice Charron noted that surveys have shown that nearly two-thirds of lawyers who remain in private practice struggle with the long hours, with women finding it especially hard because of their domestic responsibilities.

The judge herself, who penned more unanimous judgments last year than any of her colleagues, said she coped with high workload demands as a prosecutor, trial and appellate judge by pushing for ever greater “control” — not over the amount of work she does, but over where, when and how she does it.

“I have always valued the control I could have over those long hours,” she observed. “I think we really need to rethink if a lot of the difficulties could not be eliminated by more certainty over the face time that’s required” at work.

Justice Charron confessed she also struggled to discipline herself to get more work done in less time, and to take time off to recharge. “Over my career I have at different times…purposely reduced the hours that I would spend working in a day, as a stress reliever mechanism. It happens usually when you have a new job,” she explained. “You think: ‘This job requires all my time.’ It doesn’t. And you know what I discovered every time? My productivity increased. I found that less hours, my production went up. I wrote easier. My thoughts were focused. I am more rested. The time spent in meditation will be more helpful than staring at my screen...and I was happier.”

Justice Charron urged law firms not to stigmatize lawyers who are juggling work with family responsibilities.

“The whole culture of needing to put in the in hours, the famous billable hours. I think that’s a huge issue...a complex issue,” she acknowledged. But “part of this whole notion that I think we have to depart from is that ‘more is not always better,’ in the sense that just because you spend more hours doesn’t mean that the product is going to be any better.”

The judge called the “priority of profit” a “significant barrier to change.” “Many law firms are so focused on profit they may be unable to appreciate the value of apparently ‘competing’ priorities like shorter hours, flexible work schedules or pro bono legal work,” she said in a paper prepared for the symposium entitled “Transforming Legal Culture from the Inside Out: Reflections on Retaining and Advancing Women in Private Practice.”

While profit is of course necessary, she urged law firms to diversify their priorities to also include valuing pro bono work and “the health and happiness of employees and their families.”