Redundancy bias against female lawyers is widely reported
06 November 2009
Allegations are mounting from lawyers at a number of major firms that redundancy rounds have been used to jettison a disproportionate number of female lawyers.

Insiders at Allen & Overy say they were so concerned about the number of women walking out the door they asked HR to provide a breakdown. This was declined. A spokesman for the firm claimed "The criteria used for redundancies were gender neutral and agreed with our staff representatives, nearly three-quarters of whom were women."

Similar rumours are coming out of Linklaters and Clifford Chance - and both firms have also refused to give any figures relating to redundancies. And while Freshfields has had no official redundancy programme, four real estate associates left the firm back in November 2008. All of them were women.

Nor are these allegations restricted to City firms. Burges Salmon's real estate group made 36% of its female lawyers redundant but just 18% of its men. In the past nine months four female associates and one female partner have left. That means that while there are still seven female associates (compared to 17 male associates) there isn't a single remaining female partner - compared to 15 men!

A RollOnFriday simulation of Burges Salmon's Real Estate partners using actors yesterday

Apparently this lamentable state of affairs led to a meeting of Burges Salmon real estate fee earners last week to discuss career options for women. At which one partner allegedly remarked that if they wanted flexible working, he'd heard there was a high street firm in Henleaze (a suburb of Bristol) that offered such a scheme. Nice.

A spokeswoman for Burges Salmon commented that the firm didn't comment on internal meetings.