The legal profession is no longer an old boys' club. Many practices now have female partners and one, in Dundalk, has an all-woman staff, writes CAROLINE MADDEN
TRADITIONALLY IRELAND’S legal profession may have been something of an old boys’ club, but times have changed and women are now rising through the ranks. A recent survey conducted by the British publication the Lawyer found that Irish law firms have a very strong representation of female lawyers and partners. Women make up more than a quarter of partners in Irish firms, and two of the four top-tier firms – William Fry and Mason, Hayes Curran – now have female managing partners. Indeed, one Irish solicitors’ practice even has an all-female cast – Dundalk-based Catherine Allison Co.
The firm’s eponymous founder is often asked if there’s “sex discrimination going on”, but she says that this is definitely not the case. The practice just grew like that naturally. They did have one male solicitor about seven years ago, and he fitted in very well, but he has since left. “The more female it became, I suppose the more scary it was for any male to join forces with us,” Allison says.
Despite the maternity leave implications – “there’s always someone pregnant” – there are some distinct advantages to having a female skew. For one, it has proved a big draw for family law clients, who come to them from all over the country. Allison explains that because a separation or divorce is such a stressful time in the client’s life, they’re looking for someone not only with expertise, but who is approachable and can empathise with them, “someone they can talk to”.
Allison founded the practice in Dundalk in 1999, having said goodbye to a full-on London lifestyle in a big City law firm where the way to forge a career was to show how many nights you could work till midnight. Despite the gruelling hours, she says her time in London was a “brilliant experience”, and it was something of a culture shock to switch from a big firm with its own photocopying department to starting her own practice from scratch with just one secretary. “Secretaries had just about gone on to computers and were afraid of the millennium bug,” she recalls.
Her London work ethos stayed with her, and for the first year she worked around the clock. She had thought she might have children early, but instead she “tore into” her career and the firm grew. She says it wasn’t about earning more money; it was just that the work was there and she had to turn it around.
“I ended up having children later in life,” she says. “I had my first, twins, when I was 40.” In fact this worked out well, because by that stage she could afford more help, and her (very supportive) husband now works a little less so that he can mind the children and they are expecting a third. She is also able to take weekends off now to spend with her family, which might not have been possible in the early days.
Initially a lot of the firm’s work was property related, as Allison had specialised in commercial property in London. But within a year she was also doing personal injury and probate work and the firm grew into a broad civil practice – the only area they don’t practice in is criminal law.
The work now is very varied. “On one hand you’re dealing with developers who owe €100million to the bank or to Nama, and next you’re dealing with a husband who has lost his wife and child through medical negligence.”
Interestingly, she has noticed that the banks are definitely taking less of a “Rottweiler approach” now, and have realised that “you cant get feathers off a frog”. They’re more open to negotiation than they were three years ago when they would go in all guns blazing. “Now they realise that all that achieves is that they rack up legal fees. It’s better to work by consent,” she says.
For example, the firm has worked with a number of clients of Bank of Scotland, which has left the Irish market and has been involved in selling off land and a number of pubs by consent.
The firm is unusual in that it carries out work in the Republic, Northern Ireland, England and Wales. Essentially, all of the work is done out of the Dundalk head office, but they also have a small sub-office in Newry.
In the past, this allowed the firm to advise developer clients on property investments in the UK. Now they are more likely to provide advice on what has become known as “bankruptcy migration”, where clients move to the North or the UK to avail of the more favourable bankruptcy regimes in those jurisdictions.
At the peak the firm employed 17 (female) staff; today theyre down to 11, including her. Mostly the cuts have been on the administration and secretarial side. More recently, the staff took a pay cut so that there would be no redundancies. In order to keep morale up, when they complete a really big deal they go out and celebrate. That doesn’t mean heading to the nearest pub and downing pints, but instead going for a spa treatment or to see something like Mama Mia together.
Although times are tough, Allison says there’s still more than enough work to go round. “Obviously there isn’t as much cream for the cat, but the cat can live on Whiskas without the cream.”