WLC Toolkit for Sponsorship Programmes in Law Firms

IBA Women Lawyers' Committee: Toolkit for Sponsorship Programmes in Law Firms

Women make up the majority of law students and graduates globally, however this is not reflected in the statistics of those working at senior levels, across all legal sectors, where women still constitute a far smaller proportion than their male counterparts. When women are not equally represented on management level, young female talent lack role models as they cannot identify with leadership which creates an identity distance and leads to them feeling less entitled to leadership positions than their male counterparts. This creates a barrier in women’s ambition and entitlement and means that women lawyers do not have the same basis and support for aiming high, having aspirations, and becoming leaders. To allow for the inequality on management level to equalise, the need for law firms to have formal sponsorship best practices and to install requirements for male leaders to sponsor up-and-coming women lawyers have been accentuated.

Read more about the White Paper launch at the IBA Annual Conference 2023 here.