Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How a Law Firm Built a Fair Path to Partner for Women
Transcript
- Lucas: A few years ago, a global law firm with over a thousand partners looked at its own numbers and realized something uncomfortable: women made up just eighteen percent of equity partners, even though they'd been hiring roughly equal numbers of men and women out of law school for more than a decade. Luna: That gap — the pipeline leaking between associate and partner — is one of the most stubborn problems in professional services. What did they actually do about it? Lucas: They didn't just launch another women's leadership program. They redesigned the entire path to partner. And the key change was a complete overhaul of how they assigned credit for bringing in business — what's called origination credit. Luna: Origination credit is a big deal in law firms. It determines who gets the revenue credit for a client, and that directly affects bonus and partnership eligibility. Lucas: Exactly. Traditionally, the partner who first brought the client in the door got one hundred percent of the origination credit, forever. So if a senior partner had a book of business built over thirty years, younger associates — especially women and people of color — had almost no way to build their own track record. The firm changed that. They capped how long a partner could claim origination credit on a client — after three years, the credit was shared among the team working on the matter. Luna: Three years — that's not forever. That's a concrete timeline. Did it create pushback from the senior partners? Lucas: Tremendous pushback. Some of the top rainmakers argued it would destroy the firm's culture of entrepreneurship. But the managing partner made the case that the old system was actually holding the firm back — clients were demanding more diverse teams, and the firm was losing pitches because its partnership didn't reflect the market. Luna: So the business case was there. Did they also change anything about the hours requirement? Because the billable hours model is brutal for anyone with caregiving responsibilities. Lucas: They did. They introduced a reduced-hours path to partner that wasn't a dead end. Before, if a lawyer went to eighty percent hours, they were automatically moved to a non-partner track. The new policy said you could work reduced hours for up to five years and still be considered for partnership — your evaluation would be based on the quality of your work and client relationships, not just raw hours. Luna: That's a huge shift. Because the 'anyone can do it if they just work harder' narrative ignores that not everyone has a spouse at home handling everything. Lucas: Right. And the firm backed it up with data. They tracked who was using the reduced-hours path and found that while it was initially mostly women, a small but growing number of men started using it too. That destigmatized it. Luna: What about the mentorship piece? A lot of firms have formal mentorship programs, but they often don't translate into real sponsorship. Lucas: This firm went a step further. They created what they called 'partnership sponsors' — senior partners who were explicitly assigned to advocate for a small group of senior associates during the partnership evaluation. The sponsor's job was not just to advise, but to actively put the associate's name forward for high-profile assignments and client meetings. And the sponsors were held accountable — they had to report annually on what they'd done. Luna: Accountability is the missing piece in most sponsorship programs. So after five years, what happened? You mentioned the number went from eighteen percent to thirty-one percent. Lucas: Yes. Within five years, female equity partners went from eighteen percent to thirty-one percent. And the firm didn't lower its standards — revenue per partner actually increased slightly over the same period. The managing partner told the American Lawyer that the change in origination credit alone unlocked about forty million dollars in new business because younger lawyers were motivated to bring in clients they previously would have handed off to senior partners. Luna: Forty million dollars — that's a number that gets attention. And it's not just about gender, right? Those same structural changes likely help lawyers from underrepresented racial and socioeconomic backgrounds too. Lucas: Absolutely. The origination credit cap, the reduced-hours path, the sponsorship accountability — those are architecture changes. They don't depend on any one person's good intentions. And that's really the takeaway: if you want to change who gets to the top, you have to change the system that produces the top, not just train the people at the bottom. Luna: Speaking of architecture changes — I think about this all the time when I'm thinking about my own career development. And honestly, if you've found episodes like this useful for thinking through your own career moves, there's a small way to help keep this show ad-free and independent. Lucas: Yeah, it's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it — no subscription, no membership. Just a way to say this kind of conversation is worth a coffee to you. And it genuinely helps us keep doing the deep-dive episodes. Luna: We really appreciate it. And we'll get back to the case study — because the firm's story doesn't end with those five-year numbers. Lucas: No, it doesn't. The real test came when they had to sustain the changes through a leadership transition. The managing partner who championed the reforms retired after six years. His successor was a traditionalist who had initially opposed the origination credit cap. Luna: So what happened? Did the new managing partner roll it back? Lucas: He considered it. But by then, the policy had been in place long enough that a cohort of partners had been promoted under the new system — including some who had used the reduced-hours path. They made the case that reversing the policy would be a step backward for both diversity and profitability. The new managing partner agreed to keep the policy in place, but he did tweak the origination credit cap from three years to five years for the largest clients. Luna: So the policy survived, but it got diluted slightly. That's still a win compared to a full repeal. What's the current state? Lucas: As of the most recent data, female equity partnership is at thirty-five percent. The firm also publishes its partnership demographics annually — transparency that wasn't happening before. And several other large law firms have adopted similar origination credit reforms, citing this firm as a model. Luna: It's a good reminder that systemic change is possible, but it requires sustained effort and institutional memory. One champion isn't enough — you need to embed the changes so they survive that person's departure. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the hardest part of any diversity initiative: making it sticky. This firm did it by tying the new policies to measurable business outcomes — revenue, client retention, pitch win rates. When those numbers moved, the policies became part of the firm's identity, not just one leader's pet project. Luna: So for listeners who are in professional services or any organization with a clear partnership or promotion track — the lesson might be to look at your own system. Where does credit get assigned? Who gets the visibility? Are there formal or informal barriers that look like merit but actually favor a specific profile? Lucas: Right. And the fix doesn't have to be revolutionary. This firm didn't reinvent the partnership model. It just made three specific changes: capped origination credit, legitimized reduced hours, and created accountable sponsorship. Any organization can look at its own equivalent of those three levers. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. And thanks to everyone listening. We'll be back next time with another story of how inclusion gets done.