Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Latest NewsEquality, diversity and inclusion

International law firm acts to push women into senior roles in male-dominated profession

by Michael Millar 8 Aug 2006
by Michael Millar 8 Aug 2006

Reed Smith, a top-25 international law firm, has launched a new programme to help its female staff make their way up through the traditionally male-dominated profession.


The firm has created a series of workshops to expand opportunities for women at work in an industry that is notoriously “male, pale and stale”.


Legal services minister Bridget Prentice recently wrote to the top 100 UK law firms asking them to publish diversity statistics, but only 34 replied. Out of those, 32 had already published the data.


Just 3% of partners in the UK’s top 100 law firms come from ethnic minorities, according to The Lawyer magazine’s 2006 Diversity League Table.


Reed Smith’s programme focuses on providing trainees and associates with the information they need to examine their career development targets and develop the tools and skills they need to reach their goals.


The workshops, which were designed by not-for-profit research group, Catalyst also allow women to learn from their female peers and from female partners who have successfully risen through the ranks and hold leadership positions.


Brande Stellings, senior director of the Law Practice at Catalyst said women face multiple barriers to advancement in law firms.


“These barriers include lack of client development opportunities, lack of mentoring opportunities, commitment to personal or family responsibilities, exclusion from informal networks and lack of role models,” she said.


“Men have developed informal networks to address many of these barriers. One of the main goals of the workshops is to share information with female lawyers that will better enable them to achieve success, while emphasising the need to create and use informal networks of their own.”

Avatar
Michael Millar

previous post
Illegal workers
next post
Long service awards: Time for a rethink

You may also like

How should HR handle the highest inflation in...

18 May 2022

How to respond to an HMRC furlough enquiry

18 May 2022

AI adoption: Skills shortages means UK lagging behind...

18 May 2022

Nurses leaving due to pressure and workplace culture

18 May 2022

Ethnic diversity: report highlights disparities in school leadership

18 May 2022

Accreditation scheme will ‘encourage LGBT+ people to be...

17 May 2022

Bald move: Tribunal was right in sex-related harassment...

17 May 2022

Number of working people with disability up 1.3...

17 May 2022

Wages fall 1.2% behind inflation as cost of...

17 May 2022

Police Scotland pays out £948,000 to female officer...

16 May 2022
  • What it really means to be mentally fit PROMOTED | What is mental fitness...Read more
  • How music can help to ease anxiety at work PROMOTED | A lot has happened since March 2020, hasn’t it?...Read more
  • Why now is the time to plug the unhealthy gap PROMOTED | We’ve all heard the term ‘health is wealth’...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+