To report friend to FB for photo of her blacked up?

[Greyhound]

I'm really shocked - cousin of mine has pic of herself on Facebook blacked up. She is white. The picture is of her at a fancy dress party - she has covered her face in dark brown stage make up and is wearing an "Afro" wig and Rastafarian style striped hat.

Her husband is also blacked up.

Isn't it obvious? Male partners recruiting don't tend to discriminate against female trainees, on the basis that they are female, because they don't mind female trainees being female.

Back to the cocktail party - I did a short, paid stint at a European institution abroad (don't want to identify myself) to look good on my cv, so as to give myself a boost over other applicant trainees in the competitive recruitment process. Once I was in Brussels, I was immediately thrown into meeting loads of strangers around wine, generally standing in a room. In other words, just the sort of meeting described by the other poster. Its scary, but it is something you have to force yourself into making an effort for, as you don't want to get a reputation as a socially inept lemming. I'm sure there are many people who don't enjoy them that much and would rather not be there, but no-one has time or inclination to organise a team bonding session, so you chat over drinks.

Again, this is something that is drilled into you throughout your degree, and if it isn't, there is plenty of written information that you can and should find out yourself which describes it. Likewise, you are told at uni often enough that you need to not only have academic skills but practical skills sought after by firms. That students straight out of university are essentially useless and tend to lose firms money, so you have to show potential quite quickly and to stand out as being reliable, competent and hard working. This is nothing more than has been expected of any employee expecting to get on at any point in modern civilisation.

We actually had a lecture on what to expect at our first day of work and how to avoid putting our foot in it. One of the points covered was security, not only about keeping yourself safe if you find yourself alone working late in an office at night (which it did cover) but also that many firms have security systems that require you to wear ID at all times.

Theres no excuse for not preparing yourself for this.

In any event, I would lay a bet that a surprisingly high number of cvs are rejected ab initio for basic spelling mistakes. You just don't get away with it out of university.

What they are preparing you for is when you might want to do something rather inconvenient (like having children) and you will be sufficiently indoctrinated to believe that it is not possible to be a successful lawyer and have children so you will go quietly.

What nonsense. Do you really think it is in a business' interest to lose good workers. ?

Off the top of my head I can think of only 2 of the female partners who don't have children.

Buffy you sound like you're covering up your own embarrassment at your faux pas.

Flora does sound very out of date.

Buffy I think your example of what my firm could do is very weak to be honest and as Footloose says is itself at risk of being patronising, arbitrary and discriminating.

If state primary and secondary education can't in 13 years turn out children who have a fighting chance to apply to enter a law school if that is what they want to do then the problem lies in the education system. Adding the "Phaedra's firm's ( awarded on the basis of who knows what but it might give someone drawn from a hat a leg up) bursary " is a tiny sticking plaster far too late.

I asked about other possibilities at the recruiting stage of seeing applicants.

Hissing thinks I should concentrate on the best academic cvs (which is far more discriminatory in my view) Raven thinks all applicants should have the opportunity to go through a day long in depth assessment ( simply not realistic given time constraints)

For me, the issue with remaining in the legal field once I had children was the lack of availability of flexible and part time working arrangements. I think this is one of the key parts of 'institutional sexism'. There will always be those who come back with, 'But you have to put the hours in!', 'You have to work as hard as the men!' But that is where the sexism is, isn't it? I have two young children. I want to be able to see them from time to time during the week. I want to put them to bed every night. I do not want to be a SAHM, I want to work and I want to have a challenging and exciting job. But that job cannot be in a private practice law firm (for the most part). Because there is a strong culture of 'putting the hours in' - it is not a flexible environment. Is that down to demanding clients? Maybe. My personal experience suggests not, but that is just my own experience. Would it be difficult to come up with ways of working that would suit women with children in teams where the work is transaction-focussed? Yes, it would be - but that doesn't mean it's impossible. There seems to be an unwillingness to even try, IME.

Of course I could pretend that I don't mind not seeing my children throughout the working week, and maybe by doing that I would now be in a very senior position at my old firm. Certainly, I was highly respected (and told so to my face by more than one partner, on more than one occasion - I didn't imagine it, I was a bloody good lawyer). I could reasonably expect that I would have made progress if I had been able to continue to devote my entire self to the work of the firm. What I could not reasonably expect is to be able to be successful there and be the mother that I personally want to be. And that is why I left law. Is that fair? No doubt there will be many who say 'Yes! Of course it's fair! Law is a tough profession! Get out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat!' But I would suggest that, actually, a lot of extremely talented, able and experienced female lawyers end up leaving law not due to stress (as a previous poster suggested) but due to the structure of firms having been built for men and the lack of willingness to adapt to the wants and needs of women with a family.

Faultless there's nothing wrong with being over 50 but I am not, sorry to disappoint. Your posts are fairly typical of an NQ attitude that everything has changed now you are on the scene. Some things have changed (I don't see people rolling their eyes that Hindi might be a useful language to know) but some things are actually worse than they used to be.

Or do you tend to get turned down for stuff and spend a long time wondering why?

No and if you want to make it as a lawyer, you would do well not to leap to unsupported conclusions because you get angry. If you are going to insult someone, try to know what you're talking about otherwise you end up looking silly and diminishing yourself.

If you are so offended that you might have presented yourself as being eye candy, what did you mean by this?

Maybe someone needs to explain you the facts of life Hissing.

Law firms make money by sweating their assets (that's you, by the way). They're not looking for you to bring in business at your level. You might get lots of invitations to go with male partners to rugby games etc. with clients old enough to be your dad but don't think for a minute that is giving you an advantage over the junior men when it comes to career development.

I thought you were glad of rather tough lawyers taking the trouble to spell things out to you?

Because there is a strong culture of 'putting the hours in

So true. In my firm (in the States), Saturday was just another work day. You were expected to be there. The only difference was that you could wear jeans and there were Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the staff lounge.

emsyj I agree with you entirely. I don't think it's all down to demanding clients, a lot of it has to do with competition to become partners and then competition among partners, as well as the business model. Large transactions could have more staff to ease workload but that would reduce profits.

Some firms are looking at options at the junior and senior levels. Clifford Chance are doing "blind interviews" where the interviewer does not have the candidate's CV and Allen & Overy have launched their flexible Peerpoint scheme. There are things that can be tried to promote diversity at the hiring stage and to keep high quality lawyers in the profession. A&O are doing this because they can see the talent going out the door, not for charity. However it's easier for some people to write off all the women leaving private practice as bitter failures.

Actually Buffy we do mentoring and assistance with cv writing with a local school. Not anything to with applying for traineeships as it's not at that life stage. It's a drop in the ocean and of course it's still up to those , like you , in the education sector to provide the necessary education to get a degree.

Phaedra- I didnt say that you should just concentrate on the best CVs - I said that you should decide what skills and experience you want and recruit accordingly whilst at the same time being aware of and addressing structural discrimination as you find it.

I pointed out that using Cvs alone is problematic as you may end up with a group of people from very similar backgrounds so you need to look at the structural discrimination thing too and put in interventions to counteract privilege.

This might be some of the things Buffy suggests or they might be other interventions but probably not observing people at cocktail parties. (which we now know are not cocktail parties but short, office based drinks receptions so not really relevant anymore anyway)

I also think that in my experience career progression gets harder as you get older and more senior as a women and when you have children things get really tough and just because some of you are not feeling it yet as young graduates doesn't mean that you should be disparaging of older women discussing their experiences.

I like this picture.

And this one.

Those are great, Flora. I especially like the second one and will have to steal it.

Phaedra Do you really think it is in a business' interest to lose good workers. ?

I can't speak to your firm. In the firms I am familiar with, the number of partners made up each year is a fraction of the number of trainees taken on, whether you look at that year or the year the new partners were trainees. The firms can afford to, and in fact need to, slough off a lot of associates over the years. The partners need to be good enough (which is a high standard) but they don't need to be the best of the entire available pool. There are enough men (and some women) without domestic responsibilities who are good enough that the firms generally don't need to make accommodations to keep lawyers who might be just as good or even better at the partner level.

I pointed out A&O's scheme for flexible working. There have been rumblings of this sort of thing from a few other firms as well. Firms should be able to make a good profit from the margin on consulting workers so I expect to see further developments in this type of programme. On the traditional model, however, I do think firms can afford to lose good workers.

I stole both from twitter Scone.

That is really interesting Florafox

Florafox do you think that the "sloughing off" of associates part of the existing model makes women who have families more vulnerable? and if so is the new flexible working model a response/intervention to address this?

I can only speak from the point of view of 2 firms I know well. I have not seen sloughing off of associates of either sex.

I have seen careers of both stall at senior associate level and once salaries have hit a peak, little, if any increase beyond inflation pegging. From a firm's point of view they get years of experience, capability and reliability without making them partners.

I have seen nothing that makes women or women with families more or less vulnerable than men in being shed if there is a need to shed. Where cuts are needed it's support and junior professional staff which are shed. Yes they are cheaper to have but what they bring in as fee income is obviously considerably less.

hissing I definitely think it makes women with families more vulnerable. I'm not saying there is a formal "sloughing off" programme but there is a recognition or acceptance that most associates will need to leave at some point. Some may some nudging out the door but the structures are such that most will go on their own accord. They have been told since they were trainees (or in university) that "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".

I'm going to be cynical and say that I think new models are there to create value from a fantastic pool of homegrown talent that is not being utilised. There are lots of great women lawyers who are not practising because they are looking after children and then can't get back into practice (if they even want to).

I don't think these are all the answers. We need a broader societal change. I've seen a very different situation in a Scandinavian country where men and women are both responsible for child care. That makes a huge difference. Couples generally take turns at leaving work to pick up kids and employers must distribute workload and hire staff accordingly. It's not the most profitable approach from the owners' perspective but from the employees' and society's perspective, it works much better than here.

phaedra it's a straightforward numbers game. Looking at the Magic Circle this year for new trainees and new partners (in London, the total worldwide and the total number of new women partners):

Firm London trainees London partners Total partners Total Women

A&O 90 5 16 2
CC 100 7 21 8
FF 95 5 15 3
LL 125 7 21 7
S&M 85 7 n/a 3

The numbers of women may be slightly off as I guess based on their names.

If the PQE of new partners is 10 - 12 years, the trainee intakes would have been higher when they were recruited. Those intakes would have been roughly 50/50 men and women. Even with these figures, the number of new partners in each year compared with the number of new trainees is 5.5%, 7%, 5.26%, 5.6% and 8.26% respectively. I would be surprised if this was much different for the top 20 firms. Smaller firms however would have a different profile and they can be highly variable both on general partnership prospects and prospects for women.

Some firms have non-partner roles for senior lawyers (mostly professional support roles) but that leaves a lot of lawyers for whom there is no long term career at these firms. I'm not talking about formal redundancy programmes, I'm talking about on-going career management and the point that the pool of potential partners is huge compared with the number of positions. This means firms can afford to let a lot of good people leave.

I agree about the shared childcare issue. I think this is one of the root causes of economic inequality for women in mid and later life in this country.

I also think that the resulting underemployment of professional women after they have children is such a waste of talent that's its totally nonsensical for employers not to create new models to capture their expertise and experience.

Interesting (and depressing) little personal anecdote on the childcare issue - DH came in for some criticism at work this week for leaving early to pick up the DCS from childcare. It is fairly rare for him to do this as I work closer to home and shorter hours, but on this occasion I had a deadline to meet and so he went. His boss said that since DH earns the same amount as him, and his wife doesn't need to work, then there's no reason for me to work so DH shouldn't be expected to pick up any childcare related 'slack' during the working week.