Canadian Lawyer

"I have never, even as a first-year associate 30 years ago, liked events that were by women, about women, for women because I think unless you involve everybody in the discussion things don't move forward." LISA VOGT, McCarthy Tétrault LLP my role and experience as general counsel at the university. In one week three women reached out to me and it was just a very natural kind of organic process. I thought, 'Wouldn't it be fun if we all got together to share our experiences?'" she says. Members of the group include Norie Campbell, general counsel at TD Bank Group, Judy Naiberg, vice president, general counsel, and secretary at Sony Music Entertainment, Mary Martin, vice president and general counsel at Metrolinx, and Michelle Moldofsky, general counsel at St. Michael's hospital. "Every day I hear from more women wanting to be part of this group — we cover a vast number of industries." They are also a powerful group. Shin Doi has considerable experience in this realm. She created the Korean Canadian Lawyers Association in 1995 and followed with the launch of the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers in 2007. She's also currently establishing a roundtable of diversity associations with the Toronto Lawyers Association. "I've been through a lot of founding of groups. I know how difficult it is to start an organization. We took advantage of the infrastructure the Women's Law Association of Ontario already had in place," she says. In that context Shin Doi says starting a group for women GCs is no different than any other group with a special focus. "I think women value a sense of community and we as women have multiple relationships that help us both in our happy times and difficult challenging times. It's really important to us to have an excellent career as well as an excellent family life and so one of the aims of the group is networking, mentoring, and career development," she says. She is also acutely aware of the statistics that show women aren't rising to top positions in law as fast as some would think. In 2012, the Diversity Institute at Ryerson released a study on women in senior leadership positions in the Greater Toronto Area. A focus on the legal sector revealed women held just 26.7 per cent of senior leadership roles in the legal profession. In law firms 25 per cent of partners were women, 40.2 per cent of judges were women, and 42.9 per cent of Crown and deputy Crown attorneys were women. The study also indicated women are exiting firms prior to becoming equity partners for a number of reasons. "Cases before the court suggest that overt and systemic discrimination remains a significant impediment for female lawyers," the report states. "A lack of mentoring opportunities and role models and exclusion from informal networks" were also cited as barriers. But breaking down those barriers can't happen with isolated events and groups, says Lisa Vogt, chief diversity officer at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. "I have never, even as a first-year associate 30 years ago, liked events that were by women, about women, for women because I think unless you involve everybody in the discussion things don't move forward." While McCarthys holds client events at the Toronto Film Festival or Vancouver's Bard on the Beach, in which the firm encourages male lawyers to invite women clients, Vogt doesn't support the traditional client activities that favour men over women. She is all for events that don't involve five hours playing golf. "Who has that kind of time?" Vogt says things are "hugely different now" than when she started in the profession. "I think there was no question it very much was an old boys club 30 years ago and that's true of any industry where you've got a huge disproportionate number of one gender rather than another. Law, like investment banking and a lot of the professions that were male dominated, are less so now," she says. McCarthys used to have a women's task force but Vogt didn't like the optics. Three years ago, it changed its name to the national diversity committee and expanded the definition, still with a focus on gender, but broadening the debate to include everyone. "It's advancing our gender priority more significantly than if we had left it as a women's task force," says Vogt. At the end of the day, men need to be involved in the conversation, says Vogt. "I have both sons and daughters but if we don't raise our sons to understand this and to want what we do then we've failed. I'm failing my daughters by not including my sons in the conversation. I feel that about women's organizations," she says. Vogt serves on the board of directors of the Minerva Foundation for B.C. Women. When she joined, she said it was critical for her to attract men to the board. "They need to be seen to be involved and that it's a priority for all of us," she says. She's also part of Commercial Real Estate Women Network. For years it was by women for women, but there is now a push to include men. Vogt does feels strongly that unless monitored closely, women don't get the same opportunities as men. "In part that is unintended biases," she says. "[Princeton professor] Anne-Marie Slaughter called it the 'soft bigotry' of low expectations for women." Women are going to take a mat leave so we won't give her this big file because she won't want to put the hours into it. "Why don't we let her choose? Let's not choose for them. Let's give them the same client-facing opportunities and it may well be because of the way we structure our practices. It's right about the time women get up for partnership they start to have families. It's going to take longer. The corollary to that is we need to encourage our male partners and associates to take parental leave too." Toronto-based Kate Broer, region cochairwoman of diversity and inclusion at Dentons Canada LLP, doesn't prescribe to the idea only women should mentor women and she acknowledges womenonly initiatives may not have worked in www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m Jan uary 2014 29

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