Michael Pelly* says a new report by the International Bar Association has revealed that bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession are endemic.
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Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard is playing a lead role in the global push to stop bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession after a study of 7,000 lawyers revealed an “endemic” problem, with Australia one of the worst offenders.
Ms Gillard, a former lawyer, says the report by the International Bar Association (IBA) is a “clarion call for urgent action” and the profession needs to “get its house in order”.
She will open the IBA’s annual conference in Seoul in September and writes in a foreword to its report that the #MeToo movement has shown “women are no longer prepared to be silent”.
The report says the problem is “endemic”, with 50 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men having experienced bullying in the workplace.
For sexual harassment, it was one in three women versus only one in 14 men.
In Australia the problem was worse, especially for women: 73 per cent said they had been bullied and 47 per cent said they had been sexually harassed.
With an overall bullying rate of 61 per cent against the global average of 43 per cent, Australia was second only to Costa Rica.
For sexual harassment, Australia was third behind Costa Rica and the United States, with a rate of 30 per cent against the global figure of 22 per cent.
It led the report to conclude that “bullying and sexual harassment are rife in the Australian legal workplace”.
Australia did fare better when it came to having policies on both issues, with 66 per cent versus the global figure of 53 per cent.
But one Australian woman suggested that when training did take place it had little impact.
“This is an epidemic in law firms and, despite all the training, it just continues to occur,” she told the study.
“So many people leave because they are made to feel like it is their fault or they just can’t handle the environment.”
The IBA was established in 1947 and has 80,000 members from 190 Bar associations and law societies.
It has 200 group-member law firms across 170 countries.
Australia provided the biggest cohort of respondents from the 135 countries that took part, with 937 people or 13 per cent of the survey.
Almost 60 per cent of those worked at law firms.
The report makes 10 recommendations, including more flexible reporting models, and says the profession must take ownership of the problem.
Ms Gillard notes that lawyers “will be at the forefront of cases that test the efficacy of current laws” but that it “can only step up to this role with integrity if it makes sure its own house is in order”.
“This is challenging in a hierarchical profession where the most senior practitioners still tend to be disproportionately men and advancement is often as much about networks as measurable merit.”
“But it can and must be done.”
Ms Gillard chairs the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, which released a report in March that cited sexual harassment as the number one problem for women in the workplace.
“The demands for deep-seated reform are insistent and determined,’’ Ms Gillard writes in the IBA foreword.
“After all this activity, the world cannot lapse back into shameful silence.”
NSW Law Society CEO, Michael Tidball said the leaders of the profession “must step up to create change”.
“We must have the systems, the protocol and a culture of absolute equality,” Mr Tidball said.
* Michael Pelly is Legal Affairs Editor for The Australian Financial Review.
This article first appeared at www.afr.com.
