A generation beyond the equality surge, law should be a genuinely post-feminist profession, but does reality measure up to aspiration? The Firm spoke to a woman who knows.

We first contacted Linda Urquhart, Morton Fraser’s greatly admired Chief Executive, on the prompt of the publication of the Judicial Appointment Board’s annual report, which revealed a discouragingly low proportion of applicants to judicial office came from ethnic minority backgrounds, both at far lower percentages than they are represented across the population and across the law. Diversity on the bench is never going to be achieved if candidates do not present themselves, and in many ways the board and the judiciary must be considered blameless now that appointment by tapping up has long since gone.

Urquhart represents a lot of firsts, and perhaps thankfully a lot of lasts too, now that she has been the icebreaker for female Chief Executives and female chairs of CBI Scotland, and her familiarity has replaced her feminine novelty. The issue of diversity not just across the judiciary but across the legal profession and the business community is something Urquhart views from a uniquely privileged vantage point, and her experience tells us that the valued diversity sought by the profession has deeper, more nebulous roots than can be easily tackled by policy or even the most persistent of efforts.

“When we are doing graduate recruitment we don’t see much diversity at that stage,” she told the Firm.

“The Scottish ethnic minority population is not the same as you would get in city centre London, so we have a lower percentage mix, but we are still not seeing that properly represented in people going in to study law. I think the Law Society is alert to this and are trying to make a difference. We have to get into schools and talk in schools about law as a career, to try and identify that we employ lots of different people doing lots of different jobs.

“That is one of the routes in to get the kids in at the younger age and encourage a broader spectrum.”

Morton Fraser is among a number of firms who look to broaden wider knowledge of the opportunities available in law by engaging with schools and pupils, in the longer term hope that the seeds planted will blossom into career paths not just in law but across the legal services spectrum. That is one strand of a wider policy that is being applied to open up new routes into law firms other than those that have traditionally assisted younger lawyers.

“With work experience we got lots of approaches from children of people partners know or people connected to the firm. We are trying to protect some of our work experience slots for those who have no connection with the law, and to try to spread the word and make that connection,” she says.

“City of Edinburgh Council organises work placements for students through their careers service, and we’re signed up for that to take pupils form a variety of schools, which hopefully ensures we are getting a variety of people who don’t have any connection with us from any other way. You do need a route in from both sides.

“The profession has a duty to widen its base if it can. But ethnicity is a much bigger challenge than the female/male split.”

The JAB annual report makes for interesting reading (at least, we at Firm Towers thought so…), and probing between the lines of the report reveals some clues to the factors that are still discouraging certain demographic sectors from applying for office, and by extension, restricting their success in wider business.

“What interested me was the consistency across all the judicial posts,” Urquhart noted.

“I tried to think about why that might be. We have 36 partners, ten of whom are women, and of those ten, six work on a flexible basis. I wonder if the flexibility of the bench is one of the factors? The only other factor may be that if you are a part timer or a floater you may end up away from home quite a lot. When you look at the floating Sheriff posts, there were actually a very high number of women applied for that. Flexibility is still an issue, and it is not easy to build flexibility into the bench.”

The demands of judicial office are unlikely to change that factor, and there is an unavoidable reality that certain people will always rule themselves out of open applications for criteria that cannot be rectified easily or practically, yes to the detriment of the body or office, but not at their responsibility.

“I don’t perceive from my female peers that it is more difficult to get in if you are a woman, or that it doesn’t welcome women. Why we are not applying is a difficult one. Across the profession, professional women select out of working life, a number of them do. I don’t know if they opt out to be non working mothers more than non professional women do. My instinct is that this might be the case. So there are women who choose to stop, not because it is difficult to go on, but because they want to stop working.

“There is an element of self selection, I think. Of my peers, there are a number who have self selected out. Whether that is still a generational thing and will continue with younger women, I don’t know.”

It is unlikely that the present generation of female lawyers and professionals will perceive that there is any barrier that could prevent them fulfilling their chosen potential, and there is also statutory protection if aged attitudes are allowed to prevail in certain quarters. Notwithstanding the cultural support for diversity, a practical and measurable pay gap still exists between men and women in the law. How can it be so?

“We were very taken aback at the Law Society research on that three or four years ago which identified a pay gap in the profession,” Urquhart says.

“We are quite a hierarchical profession though in terms of how you will be paid, combining your years of experience and the post that you have. Women take time out and come back in, so inevitably you may lose your place. That may be right, because you then don’t have the same experience or ability to deliver.

“I am chair of CBI Scotland at the moment, and CBI and the Government have recently produced a report about women in the boardroom, and it is no different there. In the FTSE 250 only 7% of board members of those firms are women. There is still undoubtedly a social culture - we are as women the primary carers in our families regardless of whether we may have partners who are heavily involved as parents. That is the other factor that is just there, and we are never going to get away from. That is a choice, and I’m comfortable with my choice on that, and I think most women are.”

On a personal level, Linda says she has not experienced any disadvantage based on her gender, and her career path is testament to her ability to achieve. We spoke at Morton Fraser’s new offices at Edinburgh’s Quartermile, site of the old Royal Infirmary, yet utterly unrecognisable from within, such is the extent of the modernity and urban chic of the new design. In her 11 years as Chief Executive of the Firm, the two office moves - from site to site on Queen Street, and now to Quaretermile, have been part of her suite of responsibilities.

“I run the business, and Bruce Wood (chairman) runs the partnership. He will look after relations among partners, and I deal with more of the business aspects. I’m also responsible for running all the backroom internally. I have a very public facing role, but all the support teams report to me,” she explains.

“I led a small group that was tasked with the move. We took a strategic decision to make the move when we did because the leases in our old offices were coming to an end. We knew that was a once in a lease-time opportunity to move away with no ongoing liabilities. (a factor that has seen other firms in similar positions financially burned) That gave us the opportunity, because we had planned it far enough in advance, to look around at what was going to be available. We started three years ago, and were able to pick something that literally had not yet come out of the ground.

“Most people who go into Class A offices like this have to take out half the air conditioning and put it back in where it suits them once they have reconfigured the building. That in itself was a saving of a couple of hundred thousand pounds.

“A lot of our decision making is taken after consultation, whether through our managing board or within the different parts of the business. Leading change and making sure we are as efficient as possible -and that does involve innovation- is part of my job to think about and deliver.”

To undertake the Chief Executive role, as she puts it, you need to have fresh ideas. Some of her peers value the retention of their client caseload. Others spend large amounts of time overseas, fact finding. The balance Urquhart strikes for Morton Fraser is informed by her extra-curricular roles with CBI and as chairman of the Women in Business group, both critical channels for sourcing market information.

“I am out and about a lot. I spend a lot of time with the business community,” she says.

“What are they looking for in their lawyers? It is very interesting to hear what they have on their agenda and what is coming down the track for them and what it is that interests them, and bring that back to the business to find out what it is that we need to deliver. Gathering intelligence and passing it on is really important.

“I don’t do client work at all. I have contacts with key clients, and I spend a lot of time with clients in the same way I talk to the broader client target community. That’s really useful. The one thing I miss is the day to day client contact, together with the more regular results. In running a law firm, what you are doing largely is providing the infrastructure to allow others to achieve. There are fewer measurable results.”

The firm has 36 partners, and within the strictures of management and control, Urquhart says the firms tries to ensure all of them are engaged in the destiny and decision making of the partnership, acknowledging the pastoral and actualisation needs of those the firm has employed to contribute.

“Twice a year we bring all partners together and talk about the bigger picture stuff and those are some great debates. Involving them in that way makes a great difference,” she says.

“Lawyers are fiercely analytical, critical, independent, and one of the reasons they are in professional life is to have a bit of control over their own destiny. So whilst we have a corporate structure, our partners are consulted in terms of strategy, and have some say in how the firm is run, maybe a bigger say than some other firms. We describe the firm as being owned by all the partners, and run by some.”

The example of Linda Urquhart is on one hand inspiring and on the other hand discouraging. She is a tall poppy amongst her gender, a fact regrettably in keeping with the experiences of those amongst ethnic minorities in the law. Correcting that imbalance is no easy task.