Just weeks into her new role, Penelope Warne feels both proud and daunted. The senior partner of London-headquartered CMS Cameron McKenna is the only woman among the top leadership of the UK’s 20 biggest law firms.
“Big City law firms are conservative kinds of places,” she says, adding that the £25bn-a-year market is resistant to change for a broad range of reasons. “It’s many different aspects of the way we do our business, which over years and years has been hugely profitable. Therefore people hang on to a traditional model.”
It is a model that lags behind other professions when it comes to gender diversity. Few female lawyers reach the level of partner, when they typically share in a firm’s profits rather than take home a salary.
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