Sharon Cook started at Henry Davis York as one of the first part time partners of a major law firm in Australia.
That was in 1997. By 2008, she was appointed managing partner, becoming the first woman to hold such a position at a top 30 law firm.
Today, she ends her six-year tenure at the top of the firm – initially to take a well-deserved break, and later to commence in the newly created position of Managing Partner – Clients, at King & Wood Mallesons.
Cook has long been a strong advocate for women in the profession and has spent her final months at the firm meeting with staff and colleagues to ensure the cultural and structural changes she’s instigated in support of gender equality and workplace flexibility continues.
She also took the time to speak with me about just what’s changed for women in law, how we can mainstream flexible work, what she loves about Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and why– almost 35 years since she graduated from a legal class that was more than 50% women – she’s still asking, ‘where are the women’?
Below is an edited version of our conversation.
You held the title of the only woman appointed head of a major Australian law firm for a long time. How did you feel being the first, and how did the industry react at the time?
I was part of a competitive process to get the position back in 2008, there were two other people who put their hats into the ring for the role.
I was the successful woman; the other candidates were both men. I don’t believe that my gender made any difference at the time. It was not an advantage or a disadvantage. I commented back then that I was disappointed my partners had failed to notice I was female and had simply selected me on the basis of my apparent competence!
I actually, of course, really like that. It was, ‘who do we need at HDY in 2008?’ And I was the answer. It just so happened that I was also a woman.
There are still not enough women in the partnership here but the fact that I was a woman was in no way a hindrance or a help in getting the role. And it says a lot about how advanced this firm was in it thinking about woman.
HDY had originally appointed you as one of the first partners of a major firm working part time. What was it like working part time – and how were you able to extend flexible work in such a senior leadership position?
I worked part time for about three years, when my son was going to school I went back to full time work but I still worked flexibly.
There’s an important difference between part time and flexible work and HDY has also been good at having flexible work practices.
I was one of the highest performing partners in the firm but I didn’t feel the need to be chained to my desk from 6 in the morning until 8 at night. I was doing my full load as a partner, but able to do it flexibly to enable me to fit in with what my children
And you still progressed, having worked flexibly and part time. We don’t hear enough about influential people working part time. Should we be talking more about it?
I don’t like the term part time any more anyway. I like people to talk about flexible work practices. Part time sounds like you’re part committed. It’s a statement on the number of hours, the way you’re conducting your life.
Plenty of men work flexibly, even though they won’t admit that they do it. There are plenty who won’t come back after a work lunch on a Friday. Or they’ll come to work late because they’re doing the school drop off in the morning. That’s flexible work!
There are high performing partners who meet their budgets, but they’re just working at a time that suits their family. There’s a lot more of that going on than we give credit to. It’s critical to mainstream flexible work practices and not make it a gender issue.
Most large firms are still using billable hours. Does this hinder the option to work flexibly?
Technology is actually making a huge difference. Plenty of us go home, have dinner and log back on. The technology’s there. I can now dictate into my secretary’s computer. I’m often there on a Sunday afternoon doing work and my secretary can come in first thing on a Monday morning and type it up. That wasn’t possible a few years ago.
It is much easier to work flexibly now than ever before without offending the billable hour. You’re still doing the billable hour; it’s just at a time that suits you.
So billable hours help you work flexibly?
Exactly. It can show you that somebody working flexibly is still able to achieve at the same rate as somebody who’s still in the office from 9 to 6. You have a measure. Generally at HDY, we don’t care when that happens – within reason – partners do still need to interact with staff and clients.
Technology’s making it easier to do flexible work, but we still have a lot of cultural barriers. Particularly, as you say, many men are actually working flexibly they just don’t admit it. Do you think we’ve seen much of a cultural shift?
I think it’s changed, a bit. I think flexible work practices are more accepted now than they were eight years ago. But it hasn’t changed as much as I’d like. It is a constant battle. And we need to constantly be reinforcing the importance of it, just as we reinforce the importance of gender equality in the office. It’s not something you can say, ‘that’s done’. There is always work that still needs to be done, and inappropriate conversations that need to be stopped.
We need to ensure the people who are working flexibly are getting the right amount of work and the right quality. It’s constant vigilance.
There is a concern with me as a female managing partner of the firm and the fact been a passionate advocate for women in the profession, that the firm may slip back in terms of what it has achieved for women in the work place
My incoming managing partner Michael Greene certainly does not want that to happen. With his absolute support, I’m doing some work with the firm so that we can continue our journey in achieving gender equality. In recent days, I’ve been having a number of forums about gender equality in the workplaces, so I can hear from the lawyers about their lived experiences in relation to gender equality in the firm.
I’m also working with other managing partners about the equitable briefing of barristers — that follows the release of the NARs report. Chris Freeland, the managing partner at Bakers & McKenzie, has been fantastic in getting the managing partners of eight of the large firms together to take the action that the NARs report is asking us to take. The two areas I’m working on are equitable briefing and work practices.
These initiatives in relations to gender equality and work places have to start from the top and they have to stay there.
If the leaders of these firms are genuinely not committed to making the change, then it won’t happen.
That’s the leadership level. What’s happening at the individual lawyer level, particularly female lawyers? Is there a need – as Sheryl Sandberg would say – for more women to ‘lean in?’
Absolutely. And I read Lean In and I remember thinking, yes, yes! I agree with almost everything in that book. Everybody needs to take responsibility for their own careers. We all need to step up, take action and do what needs to be done to reach our goals. The thing is, boys often do that a whole lot better than girls. A lot of girls don’t have the same level of confidence, or the same dogged attention to where their careers are going as the boys do. I think there is a call for more women to take control of their careers, and ‘lean in’.
I also think that it’s not just female partners who can change the working environment. Senior women within law firms need to step up more. Senior lawyers, senior associates, special counsel, I think they need to facilitate an important role in supporting and nurturing the currency of young women in their organisations.
About 30% of our partners are women, which is better than many firms, but that means about 70% are male. There’s a great need for senior women in the organisation to stand up. Encourage other women, mentor them, help them to fight their way through difficult environments.
I’ve seen you write that we should ‘celebrate’ mothers in the workplace. Particularly new mothers who’re facing news challenges and may find it hard to work at full capacity. Could firms be doing more to support new mothers?
I think we could all be doing that more. We’ve made inroads by setting up structures for part time work. One thing is that we created the position of a flexibility manager, Justine Knight, who works in the HR team. She has the important role in working with a woman once she becomes pregnant, helping her through the decision of where she wants to take her career in the short to medium term – maternity leave, childcare arrangement, what they might want to do when they come back.
It helps in finding out what the woman’s expectations are, which is a really important process. She also keeps in touch while they are on maternity leave and about the time when they’re going to come back, the conversation is picked up again. She then works with the partner, it’s a negotiation process to make sure she’s going to come into an environment where she’s valued, will get the right kind of work, and is needed. That’s a structural change we brought about and I think it’s made a huge difference.
We also see there can be some re-adjustment issues. We’re looking at what we can do to help women in that position. With Gilbert + Tobin we’re using a consultant to help women settle back into the office after maternity leave and to give them some skills for combining motherhood and return to work.
HDY has around 30% female partners. Have you been working towards a target?
We have one of the highest levels of female partners of large law firms. No. I’m keen to promote women, but not with a target.
Was that your decision?
I didn’t think we needed a target. What I’ve done to try and achieve more women in the partnership is to create clear criteria about what it is we’re looking for in a partner.
There is a document, and it’s quite specific, about the skills we’re looking for in a partner. I then established a partner candidate review panel, which independently reviews partner-candidate applications. It takes it out of the groups and into an independent body where people are looked at on the basis of their ability and what they can bring to the partnership – not on who their mates are and whether they’re male or female, where their power base lies or anything like that. It’s an independent system based on clearly determined criteria. That allows good people to shine in that light.
Before that, one powerful group could walk into one the men’s offices and say, ‘I think it’s time you became a partner! We talked about it at golf the other day and now’s the time’. That’s overstating it – but women weren’t getting selected. We’ve taken that subjectivity and mateship out of it and looked purely at competence and contribution.
The other thing I do is to keep asking the question, ‘where are the women?’ Especially when we’re looking for a lateral partner.
I ask the question, proudly, I don’t shy away from it. Because I know having more female partners will be good for our business.
And what about women on the HDY board?
We had board elections here and unfortunately, everyone on the board here is now male. The last board had two women. This time there are no girls – no girls actually nominated.
But we’re thinking about having external board members now and I have said to the board as one of my many passing shots, ‘you need to get two external board members and they need to be women’. I think constantly saying that to people gets it into their psyche that that’s what we need to do.
Are you confident we’ll see 50/50 partnerships in the future?
I wish I could say yes. It should be the case. But I don’t believe it will be and we have a long way to go.
Thinking back to 2008, would you have expected to see more change by this point?
I became a partner in 1997. I became a lawyer in 1982. I can’t believe that now, more than 35 years on, things haven’t change more than they have. When you think about how many years we’ve had more than 50% of women coming out of law firms, you would think we would have had more change.
It’s hard to understand how after 35 years, we still have I think less that 15% of women as partners in law firms.