Women in law: Continuing the leadership conversation

BY ALB

As a follow-up to its discussion about women in leadership roles at law firms, ALB speaks to Darani Vachanavuttivong and Tiziana Sucharitkul, the co-managing partners of Thailand-headquartered Tilleke & Gibbins, about what law firms can do to ensure there are more female leaders.

ALB: Are women adequately represented in law firm leadership today, and if not, why not?
Darani: At Tilleke & Gibbins, women are very well represented at the highest levels of leadership. In our headquarters in Bangkok, female leaders head all three of our core legal departments, and six of our eight business services teams are led by women. This trend also carries on internationally; three of our seven offices are headed by women. Although Tilleke definitely has more women in leadership than most, I don't think female leadership is uncommon in Southeast Asian law firms. We have a strong peer group of female managing partners at other firms around the region.
Tiziana: As chair of Lex Mundi (an international law firm network) I spend a lot of time travelling internationally, and it’s always interesting to see how much variation there is in female representation in firm management. We feel fortunate that at Tilleke & Gibbins women are prevalent in management positions. There are also many other law firms that recognize the importance of this issue and are doing wonderful things to ensure gender equality. However, law firm leadership around the world does remain something of an “old boys’ club” and although we're seeing improvements, we aren't there yet. For example, the legal industry press has recently been focusing heavily on pay disparities between male and female senior partners, and it is abundantly clear that there is still a real difference there. Even in-house lawyers face this – an article I was reading this morning cited female in-house attorneys earning 84 cents on the dollar compared to men.
In terms of why not, although it’s not an easy answer to give, family and work-life balance remains one critical factor. Even in today’s world, women remain the lynchpin of the family. The way that people address work-life balance varies from country to country though. One factor in national variation is also the availability and social normality of domestic help from place to place—whether through larger extended family units or through the availability of domestic staff.