| 1 | 1 | | Deb Steele is a solicitor who deals with family problems. She works two days a |
| 2 | | week, job-sharing with another woman solicitor. She has two children, the younger just |
| 3 | | three months old. In recent years she had increasing problems fitting into the traditional |
| 4 | | world of solicitors' firms. The fact that the male-dominated legal profession provides |
| 5 | | neither a good service to women clients nor a fair deal to women co-workers led Deb and |
| 6 | | four other women solicitors to start a unique law firm. |
| 2 | 7 | | Kate Berry & Co Solicitors looks just like any other smallish suburban firm from |
| 8 | | the outside, occupying a terraced shop-fronted house in Grosvenor Road, Bristol. The |
| 9 | | firm deals with the mix of business thrown up by a poor area in a booming city. |
| 10 | | Nominally the firm is a partnership; it must comply with certain regulations to be |
| 11 | | permitted to function. But in practice it is a co-operative, the first solicitors' firm of its |
| 12 | | kind, in which everyone receives the same rate of pay and an equal say in management |
| 13 | | decisions. |
| 3 | 14 | | When Berry's started, the attitude of local and potentially competing firms was less |
| 15 | | one of hostility than patronising amusement. Sabina Bowler-Read remembers |
| 16 | | professional acquaintances asking why they were 'paying secretaries so much'. 'Eight |
| 17 | | months on I get the feeling that we have become established and we're no longer |
| 18 | | available to be asked those things in that kind of cheeky way,' she says. |
| 4 | 19 | | Equal pay, collective management and working patterns which take account of |
| 20 | | family commitments are not there solely on principle. They also make the firm work |
| 21 | | better. In traditional firms much of the skill and experience of legal secretaries is |
| 22 | | underused or unnecessarily restricted. Even the term 'secretary' underestimates Berry's |
| 23 | | secretaries, as, unlike secretaries in many other businesses, they produce complex |
| 24 | | documentation and perform executive tasks. |
| 5 | 25 | | If going to see a solicitor is a big step to anyone, then the problems that many |
| 26 | | women bring with them take even more courage to confront and a lot of sympathy and |
| 27 | | understanding to solve. A lot of Deb's clients have told her that they had already been to |
| 28 | | men solicitors who told them to 'try and make a go' of their broken marriages. 'They felt |
| 29 | | so undermined by such suggestions that they couldn't go through with legal proceedings,' |
| 30 | | she says. |
| 6 | 31 | | Women have some of the toughest legal problems, not in terms of jurisprudence |
| 32 | | but in terms of survival. Domestic violence and relationship breakdown can in themselves |
| 33 | | lead to very painful legal proceedings. Added to which a mean and creaking legal aid |
| 34 | | system imposes delays and more uncertainty. It's work that some firms are giving up |
| 35 | | because it pays so badly. A reason, perhaps, for the relatively uncompetitive attitude of |
| 36 | | the other local firms. 'It eases their conscience a bit,' says Sabina. In fact 'the women's |
| 37 | | firm' is already becoming well-known in Bristol and Berry's has to turn some people |
| 38 | | away. |
| 7 | 39 | | The women at Berry's are working hard to establish a new way of practising. The |
| 40 | | atmosphere is a very happy one and everyone is committed to the work. The new firm |
| 41 | | has helped nearly all the women to reconcile themselves to life in the legal profession. |
| 42 | | That is a message the rest of that profession should take notice of. |
| 8 | 43 | | There is a shortage of solicitors that will only be worsened by the recruitment crisis |
| 44 | | facing all sectors in the 1990s. Although 14 per cent of new solicitors in 1986 were |
| 45 | | women, research shows that a far higher proportion of them do not go on to practise |
| 46 | | permanently. But little is being done to retain them through the child-bearing years or to |
| 47 | | enable them to progress in seniority or to work from home. Berry's is pioneering methods |
| 48 | | which meet the combined needs of women as workers and c1ients - a crucial aspect. If |
| 49 | | lawyers are unable to meet the demands of equality in their own ranks, how far can |
| 50 | | women c1ients rely on them to achieve the same goal in the courts? |
| | | |
| | | from an article in 'The Guardian', October 4, 1989 |
