In 2014, a small group of women running some of the world’s biggest law firms gathered for dinner at the Michelin-star restaurant Per Se in New York.
Jami McKeon, the first female chair of US law firm Morgan Lewis, had recently been elected and was seeking allies in the industry. Over French-American cuisine, the six women formed what would go on to become a “fantastic network”, says McKeon.
“What I was looking for at the time was just to get the advice of other people who had been in the position,” she says. “We’ve kept that group going as more women have become . . . chairs.”
While McKeon’s appointment as a female chair still felt exceptional a decade ago, that is less true now. When the FT’s Innovative Lawyers series expanded to North America in 2010, there were only a handful of female leaders in the top 200 US law firms. Today, five of the top 10 firms listed by revenue in American Lawyer’s Am Law 100 ranking have women at the helm — and all have revenues of more than $3bn.
The greater representation of women in senior positions in law firms speaks to wider change in the industry generally.
