BUSINESS
CAREERS
Focusing on diversity can
reap huge benefits for
law firms and lawyers
CHRISTOPHER GULY
There were far fewer women
practising law in Canada when
Lisa Vogt joined what would
become McCarthy Tétrault LLP
in Vancouver in 1983.
By her estimation, roughly one
in three associates at the national
firm were women, compared to
today’s 50-50 split between
female and male lawyers. Back
then, just over 10 per cent of the
partners in the Vancouver office
were women, or about half of
today’s complement.
“But it never occurred to me
that I couldn’t be a partner and
wouldn’t be if that’s what I
wanted to do,” explains Vogt,
who has been a partner at the
firm since 1990.
“I always felt at McCarthy’s
that I was treated like everyone
else. All you had to do was be a
good lawyer.”
Her confidence has some
basis in history.
In 1921, McCarthy &
McCarthy, as it was then known,
was one of the first firms in its
birthplace of Toronto to hire a
woman lawyer (Edith Sheppard).
Nine decades later,
McCarthy’s has various initiatives to attract and retain
women lawyers, in part as a
participating firm in the Law
Society of Upper Canada’s
three-year-pilot Justicia Project
that is promoting maternity,
parental leave and flexible work
arrangements for associates and
partners, along with networking, mentoring and leadership
skills development opportunities for female lawyers.
However, diversity isn’t only
defined along gender lines,
points out Vogt.
The national diversity task
force she chairs at McCarthy’s is
an in-house group that originally focused only on women’s
issues. The task force’s mandate
was broadened two years ago to
be more inclusive of lawyers,
staff and students regardless of
their race, ethnicity, colour, religion, sexual orientation, age,
disability or any other prohibited
ground of discrimination under
human rights legislation.
“As a law firm, we are stronger
and give better legal advice if we
have diversity,” says Vogt. “We
are deliberately not looking for
lawyers that look like us. We are
hiring good lawyers.”
However, she adds that
McCarthy’s supports lawyers
who want to form “affinity
groups” with colleagues outside
the firm who, for instance, may
self-identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgendered
(LGBT). To that end, McCarthy’s
recently became a corporate
partner of Pride at Work Can-
ada, an initiative to promote
equality for LGBT employees in
the workplace.
““If you have a more
inclusive workplace,
you have people with
different backgrounds
bringing forward
different ideas,
resulting in a more
effective organization.
According to Vogt, most
major Canadian law firms recognize there is a “business case” for
gender diversity, since women
comprise more than 50 per cent
of law school graduates and head
corporate legal departments,
which in turn are significant clients for external counsel.
“If a law firm is simply com-
posed of single white straight
males, they’re more likely to
think along similar lines,” she
explains. “However, if you have a
more inclusive workplace, you
have people with different back-
grounds bringing forward differ-
ent ideas, resulting in a more
effective organization.”
Blake, Cassels & Graydon
LLP has also made a business
case for diversity and, like
McCarthy’s, reflects that notion
in its in-house equity and divers-
ity committee whose mandate
was expanded from one previ-
ously focused on gender equality
issues that was mainly reactive
in dealing with complaints
regarding the firm’s workplace
harassment policy.
Today, the committee is proactive in encouraging and promoting diversity, according to
committee member Linc Rogers,
who is also a partner in Blakes’
restructuring and insolvency
group in Toronto.
Recognized for the fourth
consecutive year by Mediacorp
Canada Inc. as one of “Canada’s
Best Diversity Employers,”
Blakes also has several external
initiatives, including a men-
toring program with Law in
Action Within Schools (LAWS) —
a University of Toronto law
school and Toronto District
School Board partnership to give
Toronto’s multicultural high
school students early law-related
work experience.
