Canadian Lawyer

She says it was important for A Call to Action when it was founded that it be all-inclusive. "But that doesn't mean the South Asian bar or other groups aren't very important so people can talk about their shared unique experiences. I think it's the same for women. We need to be all-inclusive but that doesn't mean on some occasions it's not very helpful to just have your own community." The unconscious bias When Lisa Borsook became managing partner at WeirFoulds LLP in Toronto in 2007, she recalls the amount of external attention it brought her way. Then she began to realize she was the only one. "There wasn't anybody else. It is an odd thing so at that moment I started to think more about what I would describe as the 'unconscious bias' that prevents women from rising to high-level management positions in their firms." Borsook says gender is a factor in everything and she is a supporter of women-only groups and events — the firm holds a women's event for clients every year. "We were all joking about golf the other day. . . . It's a seven-hour trip that I don't know any women who, unless they really love the game, have any time for. So our women's group is focused on coming up with interesting things for women to do to engage with prospective clients and we do that differently. "When I hear people say they are gender neutral I think 'How?' I have come to believe we just are different," says Borsook. "We collaborate differently. Our view for the future is different. The way we imagine ourselves five years from now is different," she says. "Instead of pretending it doesn't happen, I think we should applaud it and recognize it exists. If you're in-house counsel and you have an opportunity to speak to other women who are like-minded how can that be a bad thing?" Similar to WeirFoulds, Lerners LLP also holds a women-focused event every year and every year attendance has grown. "It's just another subset of people with whom you have some commonality and it's nice to have a collegial connection with," says Gillian Hnatiw, a partner with Lerners in Toronto. "The fact of the matter is even though women are apparently over-represented in law school these days we're still under-represented in the higher echelons of the profession. If you look at the years of call as you get older there are fewer and fewer women left in practice." Hnatiw views women's networking events as an opportunity for women to encourage each other. At the end of the day, while genderspecific groups may give women or other groups the benefit of networking with like-minded individuals, the actual work ntitled-4 1 of propelling women forward into senior leadership positions involves a more difficult kind of discussion. "I think women's programs are great and it's terrific we get together but that's not actually the hard work," says Broer. "That's the easy stuff. The hard stuff is really hard. If we're going to make a real difference we have to be committed to doing it and women aren't going to do that — that's going to be a partnership of women and men." SPECIALIZATION IN BUSINESS LAW Congratulations to our GPLLM Class! We are proud to announce the 2013 GPLLM graduates: For more information on the GPLLM program visit: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/programs/GPLLM.html Supported by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) - Ontario Chapter and in partnership with Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business. www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m Jan uary 2014 31 13-12-03 1:35 PM

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