Global Data Exposes The Glacial Pace of Progress at the Partnership Summit

Norma Harris, LawFuel contributing editor

The legal profession has a mathematics problem. Women now constitute the majority of law school graduates, comprise over half of associates at major firms, and represent 47% of all lawyers globally.

Yet when the elevator reaches the executive floor, the numbers tell a different story: just two in ten law firm leaders are women (although when they do reach the top women legal leaders are making a difference). These include lawyers like DLA Piper chief Georgia Dawson (pictured) and Pallas Partners’ Natasha Harrison, among others.

The latest research from the International Bar Association’s Raising the Bar: Women in Law project confirms what many practitioners have long suspected – the profession is experiencing a spectacular leakage of female talent somewhere between the mid-career mark and the managing partner’s office.

The Numbers That Should Keep Managing Partners Awake

The IBA’s December 2024 Progress Report, synthesizing data from 11 countries across five continents, reveals the uncomfortable arithmetic:

• 47% of all lawyers globally are women
• 38% of senior lawyers are women
• Only 12% of managing partners are women (according to the National Association of Women Lawyers)
• 28% of law firm partners are women – a figure that has increased by just 8 percentage points in a decade

South Korea emerged as the jurisdiction with the fewest female lawyers at senior levels – just 20%. Meanwhile, Ukraine, Türkiye, the Netherlands, and Nigeria led the pack with approximately 46% female representation in senior roles.

The IBA’s Phase 2 survey, which closed in June 2025 after collecting nearly 5,000 responses from over 100 jurisdictions, examines what the organization delicately terms “women’s lived experiences within the legal profession.” Translation: what’s actually happening on the ground versus what diversity reports claim.

The Broken Rung Problem

The American Bar Association’s 2024 Profile of the Legal Profession optimistically predicts that 2016-2026 may become known as the “Decade of the Female Lawyer.”

Women first outnumbered men in law school enrollment in 2016, became the majority among federal government lawyers in 2020, and in 2023, for the first time, comprised the majority of law firm associates.

But here’s where the mathematics gets interesting – and not in a good way.

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) has tracked a consistent pattern: women partners increased from 20% in 2013 to just 28% in 2023. At this rate, genuine gender parity in partnership won’t arrive until roughly 2051, according to Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2025 Report.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 puts it starkly: industries where women hold fewer than 20% of senior roles also show correspondingly low hiring rates for leadership positions. The legal profession sits perilously close to this threshold in several jurisdictions.

What’s Actually Working (And What Isn’t)

The IBA research identifies flexible working arrangements as the most popular and most effective initiative across jurisdictions studied. In Australia, where women comprise 58% of lawyers but only 42% at senior levels in law firms, every responding firm offered flexible working.

Notably less effective? Unconscious bias training, which only 33.3% of Australian law firm respondents rated “very effective.” The numbers suggest that a four-hour seminar about implicit assumptions isn’t quite the silver bullet some consultants promised.

Target setting emerged as the second most effective measure, though the least popular initiative overall was quota setting – which, given its relative success in corporate board composition across Europe, perhaps deserves reconsideration.

The most telling statistic from the Australian report was that 50% of responding barristers’ chambers had no initiatives in place to address gender equality.

The Business Case That Firms Keep Ignoring

McKinsey & Company research consistently demonstrates that companies with gender-diverse leadership are 25% more profitable and those with women in board roles outperform peers by 20%. The UN Global Compact notes that companies with gender-balanced leadership are 20% more likely to report improved business outcomes.

Yet a 2024 Lean In study found that two in ten companies have stopped or scaled back their bias training, with similar numbers reducing overall investment in fostering diversity.

This retreat comes at precisely the wrong moment. Six in ten senior-level women report experiencing burnout – higher than ever – according to the same research. The pipeline that firms spent decades building is springing leaks.

The Path Forward

The IBA’s Progress Report offers several evidence-based recommendations:

1. Leadership commitment – Leaders must set the tone and make measurable commitments to change
2. Mentoring and coaching – Rated highly for perceived effectiveness across multiple jurisdictions
3. Leadership training – The second-highest rated initiative for perceived effectiveness
4. Transparency – Organizations should openly share what is and isn’t working

As IBA President Almudena Arpón de Mendívil noted at the December 2024 launch: “Despite good intentions, despite the merits and talent of so many women, we still don’t reach the most senior positions across the legal sector mainly due to discriminatory obstacles placed in our paths. This directly clashes with the principles defended by our profession.”

Phase 2 findings from the global survey of 5,000 women lawyers will be launched at an in-person event in London on 12 March 2026 to mark International Women’s Day. The event will examine what is – and crucially, what isn’t – working for women pursuing legal careers.

The Bottom Line

The legal profession’s gender arithmetic doesn’t add up. Law schools produce more female than male graduates. Junior ranks are approaching parity. Yet two-thirds of the way up the partnership ladder, women start disappearing like witnesses in a complicated commercial dispute.

Either the profession addresses this systematically, or it continues the awkward exercise of explaining to clients – who increasingly demand diverse representation – why the leadership table looks like a vintage photograph from 1985.

The numbers are in. The initiatives are known. What remains is the will to implement them.

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