A Brief Overview of the Last Four Decades
We are all part of history as we live our own lives. As you get older, you identify with historical trends in the decades behind you.
I am trying to identify with those trends in relation to women in law in Alberta between 1974, when I came to Canada, and 2015.
Immigrating to Calgary from England in 1974, I found that a new law school was to open at the University of Calgary in 1976. My impossible dream in England to be a barrister could be fulfilled. There were only a handful of women barristers in England, and they all came, unlike me, from privileged families.
Calgary seemed like a haven of equality. I saw no barriers. I started law school in 1977, and by 1980, I was able to practice as a barrister.
Now, in 2015 as a retired litigator and teacher, I want to review the period of time from the late 1970’s up to the present day. In the last five years I have been Mentor in Resident at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, helping Calgary graduates, men and women, find articles.
There has been a huge growth in the involvement of women at all levels in the legal and business community in Alberta and, particularly, Calgary between 1979 and 2015.
There is absolutely no comparison to when I first started practice.
When the University of Calgary Faculty of Law opened in 1976, the school had no reputation. Graduates started to appear in 1979. The school was then considered by downtown Calgary and other law schools as more practical and less traditional than schools like Dalhousie and Toronto.
Calgary law firms remained a little suspicious in the first few years of Calgary’s students. Not enough black letter law taught, and so many women graduating. And so many women teachers at the law school, include at least three or four female deans of the Faculty of Law.
There was a whisper of “Feminism”, that bad F-word out there.
Very different now, as the various fundraising campaigns have shown.
How strange that now women from the University of Calgary Faculty of Law have gone on to be Court of Appeal Justices, Queen’s Bench Justices, Provincial Court Judges, senior counsel and owners of law firms, and become senior partners in the so called “big firms”. They work in the corridors of the United Nations.
You don’t really hear the feminism word anymore. The men who used it as a negative word now have daughters high up in the legal profession.
But it did not happen overnight, and it was not easy and it is not yet an equal world for women.
When I first started practicing at Burnet Duckworth & Palmer LLP in 1980, there were two women partners. One became a judge, and one moved into senior ranks in a corporation. When I left Burnet Duckworth & Palmer in 1994 to set up my own firm, I was a partner among four other female partners, yet the firm had quadrupled in size and many articling students were women over the years. Many women seemed to have dropped out early on.
Now in the 21st century, statistics for women in senior spots in the big firms are better, but not good enough.
So questions still remain.
Where have the women gone who dropped out of practice altogether?
My answer is as follows.
They remain educated as lawyers and often, after taking time out, they reappear as educators, politicians and entrepreneurs in our community of Alberta.
They raise their kids to follow the same higher education path. They bury their parents. They become the backbone of charity organizations and come back into law in some manner, understanding why rules of law were not actually developed to make the biggest profit as a downtown law business, but to be a service industry with rules to enable us to relate to one another as fellow community members and members of society.
Why are fewer women made partners in big firms?
The reference to the big firms is to fifteen or twenty large international and national firms in the province. That is where the difference between women and men in number of partners is still most obvious. The difference is much less than it used to be because there is more recognition of the need to accommodate women for having and raising families and an acknowledgement of their quality as lawyers.
Satisfaction in the practice of law comes from the way a lawyer’s client feels about the service received.
The traditional answer given to me when I first practiced was that the Calgary businessman was not used to dealing with female lawyers on big corporate matters and pieces of litigation involving millions.
You do not hear that said anymore. The business people are often women themselves. Practice has shown that competency and the ability to make money are not sex-related assets.
The quality of women lawyers has been proven. Women, like me, have opened their own firms, become senior counsel and advisors in major firms across the province, and been selected to sit on the bench as judges in great numbers. The Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal of Alberta is a woman, and there are many women behind her.
In 1980, I believe Mary Hetherington was the only female justice on the Court of Queen’s Bench.
Many women head up the recruiting and training sections of big firms. Women fill many of the lead spots in the public service legal world.
In the big firms, the excuse about fewer women partners often is that women do not market will and bring in as much work as men.
Women do drop out of the big firms because the required time commitment is very hard for women to match whilst raising children, working hard for clients and being involved in firm marketing and business plans. The big firms provide a great reputation for this province and its business community, but they do not work for everyone as a work environment of comfort.
There is now, however, a mature enough business world in Alberta for women to set their own measure of success by choosing a work environment that works for them individually.
Their own success as lawyers over the last four decades has given them that right.
Throughout Alberta, there are many other great law firms of medium and small size to work in outside downtown Calgary’s big firms, and many corporations and services that need lawyers.
There are four hundred small and medium size firms in Calgary alone. Or, start your own law firm, set your own standards and be your own senior partner.
Women can make their own yardstick of success, which should always include good quality work for the client, supportive colleagues, solid income goals and mentor availability when required.
Women have earned the right to stretch the profession to meet their own needs.
Virginia currently practices independently as a mediator and arbitrator. She is a former Bencher with the Law Society of Alberta and continues to mentor young professionals. In her free time, Virginia is an accomplished painter, and donates a number of her pieces to charity.