The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 22 March. My guest speak is Claire Morel de Westgaver, a respected and well-known arbitration partner in London.

Our topic this month is going to centre around dual career couples – can you both have it all? Claire will share her thoughts on the challenges that still face professional couples when both are striving to forge ahead with their careers. This often includes inadequate working environments, conflicting expectations and biases, money, health and wellbeing-related issues. She will also discuss possible tools to succeed ‘together’ at work and at home.

Female Counsel is back for 2023! I am delighted to announce that the first virtual event will take place at 9am on 1st February.

My guest speaker will be Nicola Green, a respected expert on all matters related to the menopause. At the age of 32, Nicola first started to experience menopausal symptoms and as a result of her experience, she set up her own business providing menopausal support and education to individuals and companies.

The menopause is something that will affect us all at some point in our lives and Nicola works hard to remove the taboo surrounding it.

BlueSky are a coaching organisation which provide parental coaching for law firms. Set up by 2 former lawyers, Sarah Lyons and Hannah Bradshaw, they provide targeted and career focussed parental coaching for women in law. I was recently asked to collaborate with them and host a lunch with an incredible group of professionals in the legal sector. Here are some of the items we discussed.

I’m pleased to post this hugely important piece of work from The Pipeline on my website. A message from them which is close to my heart…’recruit, retain and promote women by any means necessary. If you want to prosper, take a hammer to the glass ceiling in your firm. Don’t just talk about it, do something.’

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9:30am on 30th November 2022. I am delighted to be joined by Ania Farren and Kelly Burley to discuss “Dispelling the ‘Superwoman’ myth – why vulnerability and authenticity make us better leaders”.

On 18th October Aija Lejiece was my guest speaker for a very special Female Counsel event. One in support of breast cancer awareness. Aija spoke to us all from the heart and shared her own very personal experience. She has written a blog which I am so happy to share here with my network. Please do read and spread the word.

In recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I am honoured to announce a very special Female Counsel event. On 18 October I will be joined by Aija Lejniece, a respected lawyer, arbitrator and a woman who has experienced first-hand the reality of breast cancer. Aija will share her journey with us: the effect the diagnosis has had on her life, career and the lessons she’s learned along the way about taking care of and advocating for oneself.

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9am on 29th September. I am delighted to be joined by a panel of female lawyers who have in recent times all been promoted to partner. They will lead our discussion on their different paths to partnership, what they have learnt along the way and the reality of achieving that coveted title! My huge thanks to Alanna, Alison and Fran for agreeing to take part in this.

This will be a fabulous IN PERSON event bringing together our incredible network of female lawyers from a host of disciplines and firms. This is a great opportunity to meet with other female lawyers, make new connections, share stories and most importantly, support and elevate one another!

The next Female Counsel event will take place on 26th May at 9am. At our last session a really important question was asked: ‘How do we female lawyers set boundaries to enable us to be happy, successful and fulfilled both at work and outside the office?’ This is such a huge topic and one that demands proper discussion time. How do we assert ourselves to gain some sort of work/life balance? Is it even possible?

As part of my new business, I want to provide women with a forum in which to discuss issues that really matter in the modern legal world. And so I am pleased to launch ‘Female Counsel’. Every quarter I will be joined by an inspiring woman and I am delighted to announce that Vivien Davies, senior litigation partner at Fieldfisher will be my first guest speaker. Vivien is passionate about nurturing and #elevatingfemaletalent and she is going to discuss how the workplace needs to be redesigned to ensure it is fit for purpose.

Recently, I had the pleasure of presenting to an incredible audience – Mute off Thursdays - a group of female arbitration lawyers, across the globe, who meet virtually every week for a topical discussion.

Most of us would recognise performance and image as being key elements to success – and they are essential of course. But here we come to the nub of the issue around career progression, because the unsettling aspect of Coleman’s research lies in the relative importance of these three factors.

Life is busy and all too often planning for our careers takes a back seat. Quite frankly, we don’t have time to think about the long term. In reality, for a lot of us, we only think about our careers if something negative happens. Maybe, we don’t get the promotion to partnership we know we really deserve; a lateral comes on board who isn’t quite right. Or we react to an approach from another law firm. Without a plan we end up with a knee jerk reaction…

In my years of recruitment, I have seen many ranging from the biblical to the more manageable. It’s a way for the candidate to really sell themselves but why do we find them so difficult to complete? Why do female partners in particular really struggle with them?

Law firms spend an incredible amount of time and money on hiring partners. The aim is to onboard a partner who will be a success, integrate into the team and wider firm, generate clients and have a long and happy career. Here are my thoughts on how to achieve just that.

I have worked in recruitment for almost 15 years with a well-known and very well-respected London agency. But recently I realised my focus has shifted to working with female lawyers and with law firms who were keen to address the diversity issue within their team.

I’m so proud to be able to say that Norah Durrant Recruitment has been set up by a team of fantastic women and I would like to thank them all.

Is it just money? Does that really push people to move firms? Working with female lawyers over the years has shown me money is definitely not the motivating factor when making a move. Yes, of course it’s important but it is not the driving factor. So what is?