​Every day, I speak to brilliant women across legal private practice and in-house. Senior associates quietly running the biggest matters. Partners carrying major client relationships. GCs steering organisations through chaos with calm precision. And yet the conversation often lands in the same place: “I love the work, but the cost feels high.” International Women’s Day is a reminder that women do not need fixing. The system still needs adjusting.

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The pattern I keep hearing

In recruitment, you get a front-row seat to what makes people stay, what makes them move, and what makes them leave. For women in law, the sticking points are rarely about capability. They are about access and opportunity.

• Visibility: career-making work still too often goes to the usual suspects. If you are not in the room, you are not always in the running.

• Sponsorship: mentors are common. Sponsors, the people who advocate for you when you are not present, are far less common.

• Flexibility with consequences: plenty of workplaces offer flexibility. Fewer ensure it does not quietly shrink the quality of work, client exposure, or promotion prospects.

• The extra load: the invisible work, mentoring, smoothing, holding teams together, gets praised but not always rewarded.

None of this is new. But it is still shaping careers in real time.

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What I tell women building, or rebuilding, their careers

From a recruiter’s lens, progression is part performance, part positioning. You can be exceptional and still be overlooked if the right people are not seeing your impact.

Here is the practical advice I give most often:

• Treat your achievements like evidence: Keep a running wins file. Key outcomes, client feedback, revenue impact, leadership moments, complex work you have driven. Make it easy for decision-makers to say yes.

• Do not just find mentors: Secure sponsors who will put your name forward for the big matter, the pitch, the step up? Identify those people and build relationships with intention.

• Ask for the work that changes your trajectory: The court time. The client-facing roles. The messy, high-profile matters. Do not wait until you feel 120% ready. Growth is part of the deal.

• Choose environments that match your ambition: A move is not failure. It is strategy. The best career decisions I see are when women stop trying to outwork a system and instead choose a platform that backs them.

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What I want firms and leaders to hear this IWD

If you want to attract and keep top women, it cannot be celebrate women one week a year and business as usual the rest. The firms doing this well are the ones that:

• allocate high-value work fairly, not just volume but visibility and complexity

• make progression criteria crystal clear

• reward contribution properly, including leadership, client growth, and team building

• make flexibility real, without career penalties

• build sponsorship into leadership expectations

Retention is not a mystery. It is a response to what people experience.

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My IWD message, from the hiring front line

Women in law are not the pipeline. They are already running the matters, building the practices, leading the teams. The question is not whether the talent exists. It is whether the profession is willing to share power, credit, and opportunity in a way that matches reality. If you are a woman in law, you do not need to shrink to fit the room. Find the room that fits your ambition.

If you are a leader, then sponsor someone. Put her name forward. Give her the work. Back her publicly. That is how we balance the scales, one decision at a time.

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