At the time, she made over 200 recommendations for improving the lot of women in the profession. Now, 15 years later, the Law Society of Upper Canada has released its report on retaining women in the profession and many of the same issues raised by Wilson are still present: a high proportion of women enter the legal profession at the initial entry level (more than 50 per cent of lawyers called to the bar are female), and that there is a higher attrition rate for women than men from private practice.

While the profession is working towards finding solutions to ensure women remain and suceeed in the practice, Canadian Lawyer gathered together five senior members of the bar to share their stories, discuss why they stayed in the profession, and their thoughts for future generations’ success. Joining editor Gail J. Cohen at the roundtable were: Justice Eleanore A. Cronk of the Ontario Court of Appeal; Linda Rothstein, managing partner of Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein; Kirby Chown, Ontario region managing partner for McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Carla Swansburg, senior counsel for the RBC Law Group, and Mayo Moran, dean of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. Read the bios of all our participants here.

Following are some of the highlights of the lively roundtable discussion, which took place April 15 at Toronto’s Verity club.


ON LAW AND LIFE

JUSTICE ELEANORE A. CRONK: One of the reasons I went into law was not just because of the father who wanted to be a trial lawyer, it was because of the mother who was very accomplished in her own right, but believed strongly in women being autonomous, having an independent source of money, not being dependent on the men in their lives for their financial security, for having something that would give them a sense of self-worth that was very personal, and that was encouraged in the family environment that I lived in and grew up in. And I think . . . and law, for me, was exactly that.

And I think law presents exactly the same opportunity to women today, in 2008, to do that, that it did in 1971. And I think it is really important to reinforce that because I think . . . I continue to say to women that law is an extraordinarily rewarding profession for women, despite the difficulties. I think it is a licence for women to do what they want to do in life, to always know that there is an ability to be financially secure if you need to be, and to make your own decisions. And I think there are very few professions or business opportunities that afford that to women, and law still does.

LINDA ROTHSTEIN: Law and my career, in particular, were an incredible refuge for me for a period of four years when I was dealing with marital breakdown. And I can remember being so profoundly aware of how lucky I was that I could retreat to my office and be successful, or feel mostly successful most of the time in my career when I was going through that very painful personal experience, and imagining what it would be like for women who didn’t have a career and had to face that down. And just being completely overwhelmed with the feeling that that would be extraordinarily lonely, difficult, isolating, a thousand times worse than anything I experienced. It was an extraordinary feeling of refuge, walking into my office every day, living through that.


ON MEMORABLE MOMENTS

ROTHSTEIN: I can tell you the period of time when I felt most excited about my career was when I and 17 of my closest partners founded Paliare Roland. I consider that my greatest professional accomplishment, being part of the founding of a law firm. So, for sure, for sure, that whole period of time, the six months before, the six months after that whole year.

CARLA SWANSBURG: [I]t was the day that I got the job that I have now, because I think I have the best in-house litigation job in the country. And that was sort of my thinking when I got the job, and that remains my thinking three-and-a-half years later.

MAYO MORAN: It is similar in the sense that I think probably the most exciting day was the day I found out I became dean. And I remember the person who phoned me said, “Are you sitting down?” And I said, “No.” And the person said, “Well, you are about to make history.” And I was, like, “Oh, my God.” [I]t was scary, of course, but really, really incredible because I was the first woman.

KIRBY CHOWN:  I think for me . . . when I got this management position at McCarthy Tétrault in 2002, you know, I had in the back of my mind, I thought, “Gee, it seems to me we could be doing more for women,” just thinking of my own firm. And so, finally being in a position where I had some power, I was sitting at the table, I had resources. Having that wonderful experience where you have an idea in your head, but that it is actually then embraced by a broader group of people who take it and get excited, and say, “Yes, we can do things.” And, at those moments, you think, “Yes,” you know, “change is possible”, and you need a whole army of people who are wanting to do it. But that was a wonderful feeling, to sort of transform an idea into the start of action.


ON PREPARING FOR HURDLES

CHOWN: I don’t think there is any way of preparing. You come up and there is the hurdle, and you think, “Am I going to fall down, or am I going to leap over, or am I going to climb over?” So, I started my hurdle running early. I had twins in my first year of practice. And in the litigation group of McCarthys, at that time, there were two other women and neither of them had children. So, a woman having children at that stage in their career was a novelty in the law firm. So, I didn’t have a lot of role models to see how women managed that, but it was instructive. Talk about engaging and stimulating to have twins . . . well, I had to figure these things out right away. How was I going to manage learning to be a litigator, and manage having these children. So, it was a bit of trial and error, but it was like, “Here you are, open your mouth, start requesting, because if not, you know, you are going to be overwhelmed.”

SWANSBURG:  Well, even when I interviewed at the firm that I ended up first working at, it was almost like that is when I saw the hurdle because the whole first round of interviews, I didn’t meet any women. And because I had come through law school at a time when there were, almost half as many women, you really notice that, “Wow, where are all the girls?” But it was almost sort of coming out a bit too naively because I didn’t realize until I actually got here and got into the profession that it was such a male-dominated world. And I found, and it perhaps was something that I and other women had brought on themselves, but the determination was, “Well, I will just have to do better than the males. I will just have to work harder than the men. I will just have to sort of prove myself.”

ROTHSTEIN: I really think it is critical to find at least some men in your early years who are very interested in you as a person, prepared to befriend you, have fun with you, share a laugh with you, and encourage you in the career. If I look back at some of those early years, some of the advice I got from some of my male colleagues was lacking some insights that they would now have. I think I really was excited by the challenge of overcoming obstacles, and I think most people who like advocacy — not just women, but also men — like the challenge of overcoming obstacles. I think there is a correlation, we were talking about, between musicians and advocates, and I think there is also a high correlation between people who like hiking and canoe trips and advocates. This is one of my private tests, and if you look at my law firm, which I am very proud to say, has lots of women in it, they all love canoe trips. Like, you have to be prepared to put up with those cold, dark, rainy nights in a wet tent because you know, when the sun comes out and you start paddling again as a team, it is just such a fabulous experience, and you feel so great that you weathered that night.


ON STAYING IN THE PROFESSION

CRONK: I think, in the ‘70s and in the ‘80s . . . there simply weren’t enough women in mainstream litigation. So, the result was . . . you just simply worked very hard. Maybe at the back of your mind, you were saying, “Well, I will just prove that I can work harder, and be not as good as, but better than.” The standard was never “as good as,” the issue was better than the men, staying later, and getting up early. That was very much a product of the times. I think that has changed. But, at some point, very quickly, it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you were a woman; it had to do with whether you belonged in the environment that you were in.

SWANSBURG: I figured, “Well, what else can I do that would be a rewarding career, that would be intellectually challenging, that I am capable and qualified to do, and that gives me some responsibility, and some autonomy?” And I thought about it many times over my career, and there was no other answer. This was the profession that would give me all of that,

ROTHSTEIN: [I]t is hard to recreate exactly why I stayed, except for that sense of wanting to overcome that obstacle, frankly, which is a bit irrational. They are no longer clearly defined in my mind, but there are all kinds of things that are very personal. Like, I remember there were a whole bunch of female friends who felt profoundly guilty about going to work. I wasn’t. I didn’t suffer that, not in any large measure. Why? I don’t know why. I didn’t think my kids were being inadequately taken care of by a nanny. I didn’t think that I was going to be a less effective mom. In fact, I wasn’t at all sure that I should be with my kids 24/7. But I think that is a huge thing. I think for women who had that feeling, that they were really, in some measure, failing their children, that was a huge sort of magnet that pulled them out of any sense of contentment when they came to work every day.


ON CHILDREN

MORAN: I always felt [in the academy] I was totally on equal footing, just as you said, and I loved being dean. But . . . I felt that there were questions asked of me because I was a woman. There was a certain set of questions that would not have been asked with the man exactly like me. And maybe that is just being the first, or . . . who knows what it was. Part of it is about children. [O]ther deans have had many children, and it was never a question. But, when you are a woman and you have a young child, all of a sudden, it is a question, no matter what you have done. And so, I have been quite aware of needing to respond to a slightly different set of questions, and to sort of prove myself in a certain way in a sense that I don’t necessarily think a man just like me in every way, I don’t think those questions would have been asked.

Now, like the people around the table, I like rising to the challenge, right. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like showing that those views were wrong, and why they were wrong, and how being different could bring something to the table. But I have definitely felt aware of the need to make that clear. Where there was no diversity of opinion was on one fact, which is that having children is the biggest, I think, challenge for women in the legal profession, and elsewhere. I mean, that was the one thread that you could carry through everything. Everything else varied, right, but the one thread you could carry through was that it posed a huge challenge. I think it is great for kids to have mothers that love what they do, when they are really engaged in their lives.

SWANSBURG: And if you do want to have children, I say to people — and nobody is going to listen — but there is no time like the present. You have to sort of separate your personal self from your work self and just decide that you want to have children, and live with whatever the consequences are, which may or may not be significant.

CHOWN:  What I worry about is young women feeling the guilt and feeling the pressure when they have small children, they are trying to build a practice, is trading off momentary relief from the pressure by going to a less interesting job, or leaving the profession altogether, and back to this engagement, intellectual stimulation. We know, with our older children, there comes a point in which they are on the voyage out. They don’t need you as much. And I am worried, then, about women in less satisfying jobs intellectually. So, I think it is worth weathering. Like Carla says, it is always balancing the challenges with the rewards. But the rewards are quite significant, I think, to us as individuals, as thinking beings, as people who want to effect change.