IBA Showcase: The new female leadership of law firms – a game changer?

Friday 1 December 2023

This IBA Showcase session brought together a panel of top female leaders to discuss what qualities are needed, what female leadership brings to a firm and how diverse voices benefit everyone.

Almudena Arpón de Mendívil, IBA President: This showcase is really rating top on my Paris priorities. What we will be doing is discussing the new female leadership of law firms. We want to provide, with inspiration for both men and for women, the qualities that female leaders bring to the table. We want to consider whether those qualities have a different flavour to the traditional male leadership traits, whether we should even treat it separately and whether those qualities differ. We need to make female leadership really sustainable.

Franklin Vrede, INSEAD business school, Fontainebleau; Showcase moderator (FV): One of the key questions we're asking is: are you a leader of today or are you a leader of tomorrow? This depends on whether you can deal with all the challenges that we're facing right now. And these are exponential challenges, not just the political challenges, the conflicts between countries, the economic challenges. We're also seeing generational challenges; millennials, Gen Z coming in, so organisations are changing. Your leadership responsibilities are changing in terms of being less about control, but responsibility and making things happen. It means we're entering into a different reality, especially in law firms. We need different leadership and it seems that women have an advantage there because the new type of leadership we're looking for is ‘feminine’ leadership. It's not necessarily female leadership. It's something that both male and female leaders in law firms could benefit from.

Carola van den Bruinhorst, Loyens & Loeff, Amsterdam; Showcase moderator (CVB): Some of those feminine characteristics that have been mentioned are humility, vulnerability, transparency and empathy. I would like to hear from you whether you recognise that and, of course, what sort of feminine features you bring to your firm.

Aedamar Comiskey, Linklaters, London (AC): I think that bringing it back to what most businesses are about, but law firms in particular, they are people businesses. And really for me it's all about how do you get the best out of people and how do you enable and empower them to give their best? And if you can achieve that and you can motivate people and energise people, then the business is going to do really well. And whether that's feminine leadership? To me, it should be leadership for everybody. Full stop. Because why wouldn't you want to be getting the best out of people? So collaboration, collegiality, empowering people, inspiring people and energising people – that's what I think we should be aiming for. And then the business will do very, very well.

Linda Yang, Yingke Law Firm, Beijing: According to Tao Te Ching – the author is Laozi, who is a very reputable philosopher in ancient times – the best of virtues of a human being is like water. In China it's very interesting that women are described like water, I think because we share lots of similarities. We are the origin of life and we are soft, we are resilient and we are flexible. In Tao Te Ching he said the best word to use is water, because water moistens everything but asks for nothing in return. I think this shows the virtue of altruism. That's the most important virtue in leadership. Also, according to Laozi, you should have a heart as deep as water. It means that you should have a profound and inclusive heart filled with intelligence, empathy and compassion. I think it does make us unique and does make us successful.

CVB: I think that's really beautiful and indeed very profound. And it also brings us to the question, to what extent are those feminine features universal?

Marie-Aimée de Dampierre, Hogan Lovells, Paris: I agree with the universal aspect of those features. And when you say that we want to get the best out of people, when you say that patience, generosity, giving, being flexible, I think at the end of the day: how do you do that? You listen. Women are listening so that people feel that they are in a safe environment, that they trust you. And by building trust you increase the motivation, you incentivise collaboration and you get more benefit for the firm. Now, yes, those features are universal, but that might not be perceived and understood in the same way. We are a global firm and of course there are cultural differences and it's important throughout those discussions that people express themselves and you understand them so that you are an even more effective leader.

CVB: How does this work for your law firms?

Maria-Pia Hope, Vinge, Stockholm (MH): I like to think that running a law firm, when it comes to the financial side – the sort of ‘hard stuff’ – that's not actually rocket science. It's not all that difficult. It's the people side of things that is really complex. That's really something that I have thought we really need to focus on, and I think this is the time for empathy, for inclusion, for really supporting each other. I think it is the case that women probably bring that to a large extent to the table. Not to say that men can't do that too. They certainly do. But I think I can see that it does make a difference. When I was a young partner, I was the first woman on our executive board. But slowly and gradually, more women joined and now we're sort of 50:50 and the whole tone of the conversation, the topics and the way we look at things are really substantially changed. I really think that women do bring different perspectives.

FV: This is echoed by research – that one executive in a team doesn't make a huge difference. But when there are multiple, this is where you start to see different conversations, different perspectives and different decisions. Do you see a strong correlation with feminine leadership and the success of a law firm?

Farmida Bi, Norton Rose Fulbright, London (FB): I don't know whether you could directly prove that feminine leadership leads to a more profitable law firm. As you know, there are lots of studies which say that diverse leadership results in improved performance. And I think the sort of special pleading that I've heard, particularly from women, for most of my career is not something that I'm willing to tolerate anymore. I feel that for the last 22 years that I've been a partner, I've sat on platforms like this and basically said: let us in because we'll make you more profitable, we'll manage you better, we'll do this better. And when I first became the chair of our firm, I would have partner meetings where I'd say we really need to focus on diversity because our clients want it, it'll make us more profitable, all of this stuff. And now I've just stopped saying that. I basically say we have to be diverse because that is reflective of who we are as a firm. If 50 per cent plus women are joining us at the beginning of our process and so many are choosing to opt out, there is a profound unfairness in the structures that we have created. And so, as a symbol of fairness, of what is right and just – and as lawyers most of us believe in fairness and justice – we need to address those obstacles and overcome them. I'm very grateful to Almudena for hosting this event but Almudena is the first woman IBA President in 20 years. I very much hope that going forward, we're not going to be waiting another 20 years.

We have to get to the point where you just have to be as good as the next man. And if you're as good as the next man, that is the point at which we have succeeded. So, you know, I completely agree that as women leaders, we bring empathy and compassion and collegiality. And with our changing workforce, all of that is going to become increasingly important, not just for women, but also for the men who are joining us.

CVB: Why is diversity and inclusion important? The only point I wanted to make is because it's the right thing to do.

AC: I do think it's an important point to make. It's the right thing to do, but it is also how you get more talent because I really feel quite strongly that women are not just there to do the nice, soft stuff. They do that really well, but they also do the hard business stuff really well too. So, you know, sometimes people think: ‘oh, I've got my woman partner and I'll get her to do the the people piece’. And you know what? Fine. We can do the people stuff really well. But make no mistake, we can also do the hard business, M&A negotiation or any other negotiation, really very well. I don't want this to just be all about ‘nicey nicey’.

Paula Surerus, Veirano Advogados, Rio de Janeiro: I would say that our main goal is to create a culture of belonging. In a law firm, the partners are owners of the business and feel like owners of the business. Therefore, I would say that the role of a managing partner is different from the role of a chief executive officer of a classical enterprise. Therefore, it's so important in a law firm to build consensus in a certain circumstance. Not, of course, for every decision, but by building consensus you can get your partners really involved and as a result, you get more collaboration, more sharing of information and more profits.

CVB: What do you see as your legacy?

MH: Looking back, actually, what I'm most proud of is what we did a few years into my partnership, and that was not just me – I was part of it – but it was primarily a male-dominated, at that point in time, board that decided to push for more women partners. We set a target because we were really doing pretty uselessly. We were like the rest of Swedish law firms, somewhere around 15–17 per cent women partners. You know, we looked around and said, well, that's not good enough because we are recruiting 56 per cent of women from university, which should be reflected in the senior ranks. And we set a 50 per cent target. That's had a tremendous effect. We didn't quite know how we would achieve that. The commitment to such [a target] was actually really important. I think looking back and seeing now so many talented younger partners who are contributing massively to the business, you know, making rain, doing all the stuff that traditionally men have done, that makes me really, really proud.

FB: We had our new partner promotions meetings a week before last and that is always my proudest week in the firm, because you meet the future of the firm. And I think that to the point that you made about rainmakers: when I look at our best performing partners around the globe, out of the top three, two of them are women, and nobody says they're women. They just say these are amazing partners. So, the firm that I think I will leave behind is going to be, right across every metric, a much more diverse, dynamic, exciting place to be. And I'm very proud of that.

This is an abridged version of the new female leadership of law firms IBA Showcase session at the IBA Annual Conference in Paris. The filmed session can be viewed in full here.

Photo: Speakers at 'The new female leadership of law firms' session