Increase in female lawyers is not reaching senior levels

Increase in female lawyers is not reaching senior levels

The largest international survey of women in law reveals that achieving senior roles is still hard for female lawyers.

The Law Society of England & Wales’ survey had 5,758 responses from women, 554 from men, and 1,469 unknown or other. It found that only 48% of women reported progress in gender equality over the past 5 years, compared to 74% of men who said so.

“As women solicitors practising in England and Wales outnumber men for the first time in history, people working in law across the world have spoken out about the challenges the profession faces in achieving gender equality,” said Law Society vice president Christina Blacklaws.

Unconscious bias is the main issue for career progression (52%) while 46% feel that routes to promotion are male-orientated.

While 91% of respondents said that flexible working is critical to improving diversity, and 52% said they work in an organisation where flexibility is enabled; 41% said that current resistance to flexible working restricts their ability to rise up the ladder.

Hogan Lovells advises Swissport on Aerocare acquisition

Hogan Lovells has provided cross-practice, multi-jurisdictional advice to Swissport on its acquisition of Australia and New Zealand airport ground handling firm Aerocare.

The Hogan Lovells team was led by banking partners Alexander Premont (London and Paris), Gordon Wilson, (Washington, D.C.) and Richard Hayes (Sydney); corporate partner Matthew Johnson (Perth); and international debt capital markets partner Sylvain Dhennin (London).

"We were delighted to combine our international financing and corporate expertise to assist our client with this transformational acquisition and look forward to working with the Swissport and Aerocare teams to continue their impressive growth trajectories,"  commented Richard Hayes, head of the firm's banking practice in Australia.

Legal tech hackathon launched in Singapore

Singapore will hold a 48-hour hackathon event next month, enabling legal professionals and law students to compete against software developers and designers, to solve everyday challenges.

The event is being held by the Singapore Academy of Law and the Personal Data Protection Commission and will draw challenges from 100 legal industry problem statements collated by SAL’s Future Law Innovation Programme.

Technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence and smart contracts will impact the business models of legal services.” said Mr Paul Neo, SAL’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. “FLIP aims to prepare our legal community to become future-ready by helping law firms and legal professionals understand, develop and integrate relevant technology solutions to help in the future practice of law.”

Applications can be made via techlawfest.com and the winners will receive up to $6,000 and a chance to develop their solutions with the FLIP Accelerator Programme.