On a recent episode of Law Tech Talks, produced in partnership with mattero, the trio of female legal leaders spoke about the vocational journey of women in Australia’s legal profession and how it is evolving post-pandemic with the rise of flexible working and the rise of legal tech.

Ms Chevallier-Knospe said that at mattero, they see a lot of female firm owners advancing their careers with the use of legal tech.

“We like to speak to our clients. We like to find out their background [and] their stories and share that with our audience and with the legal fraternity at large. Mattero was designed specifically for the needs of sole practitioners, small law firms,” she said.

“And we find that the vast majority that makes up this demographic tends to be women. And we want to support the women in law and women who want to develop their careers into their own law firms.”

In terms of what life in law currently looks like for women, it has evolved a lot post-pandemic — which is something Ms Kish said she reflects on “absolutely every day”.

“When you are a mom and you are a mom in business, you have so many balls in the air. You have mum life; you have your children. But also, I like to think of my teammates, also a little bit like my children; I’m there to support them, nurture them, [and] provide all of that. Then, of course, you’ve got the challenges of your clients and casework. And as a woman firm, owner opportunities arise, so opportunities to speak, opportunities to write. There are just so many balls in the air. And I guess women today, we’ve always been sort of the masters of doing it all,” she explained.

“How can we do it in a way that we are taking care of ourselves and then also doing the best possible job for our clients, for our team, for our families? So, my reflection is, be very aware of everything that’s going on around you. Sometimes it can feel like you’re up on a high wire, one misstep and down you go. But at the same time, it’s completely exhilarating the [excitement] being up there. So just have that awareness because it’s not going to be easy. There will be challenges, but it can also be a really great and exciting place.”

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Echoing a similar sentiment, Ms Brauman emphasised that post-pandemic, the flexibility and opportunities for female lawyers are becoming more and more abundant.

“If I reflect back to what I thought my career would look like when I first started, what I was seeing around me was women sort of doing five years then, looking to have children and pretty much leaving the profession. Whereas now, we’ve got, even in my team, I’ve got people who’ve moved to Australia from overseas and requalified,” she said.

“I’ve got moms retraining to do law while they’ve had kids and coming to work in their ’40s as a new practitioner. I’ve got women on maternity leaves looking to come back flexibly, but full-time flexibly, not just part-time. So, I think all those things have added a whole lot of elements and opportunities.”

Because of this increasing flexibility, Ms O’Farrell said that newer-age law firms might need to find a “new unique selling point” in the post-pandemic new normal.

“Our firm has always been built on the need for flexibility. It’s not just something that we’ve offered, but it’s been part of the fabric of the business-like high performance since the absolute get-go. And while that flexibility, particularly in terms of hours that you work and location that you work, has always been a given. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised as we’re coming out of the disruption of the last couple of years, how much the team is actually opting to work from the office,” she said.

“We don’t have any hard and fast rules about working in the office, but people are in about half the time in our experience. And I think people are really wanting to make those decisions for themselves. But after these disrupted years, people are really looking for some separation between work and home and the opportunity to actually build a connection with their teammates.”

However, compared to when Ms O’Farrell first set up her firm, the flexibility is slightly more of a challenge, the more her team grows.

“We now have a team of 11 people, and managing that flexibility across a larger team is certainly harder than managing it on an individual basis. And one of the issues, I think, we’ve faced as a team is communication. And we have a weekly stand-up meeting on a Monday. And if people are not in on Mondays or unable to make the meeting for whatever reason, then we’ve had to become much more disciplined around making sure that messages are communicated to the team outside of that weekly structure,” she added.

“So, there is definitely work to be done even within businesses that are built on this premise of flexibility to make sure that you’re inclusive as possible and communicating as effectively as possible to the team.”

In terms of trying to define flexibility, however, Ms Kish said that, for her, it simply means letting legal processes “organically move and change” with what suits as her firm grows.

“I [decided that I] am not going to fit into this cookie cutter, [and that] I’m going to create my own definition of flexibility,” she said.

“And I like to say it this way rather than fit into that typical kind of lawyer mould. And this is what a lawyer’s expected to do at this level. I’m going to redefine what that looks like. So, what that looked like for us was a very lean micro firm that allowed us to move around pivot change as quickly as we needed to. We started out as a mobile firm, travelling to clients and servicing them that way. And we’ve allowed ourselves to evolve as we’ve needed to grow and change.”

Moving forward, female firm owners will continue to be enabled by both advances in legal tech — but also by changing client expectations post-pandemic, Ms Brauman added.

“Most of my team still come into the office, but clients are rarely coming in now. Which just means that we can provide more flexibility in the service that we’re providing. And so, I suppose we capture more time, or there’s less inefficiencies in preparing space for someone to come into and having things prepared and printed because they’re already digital,” she said.  

“So, I think in terms of the way we’re practising, I think that has got a lot to say about the change that is enabling us to practise differently as well is, who we are servicing and how.”

To hear more about how we can lift the visibility of women in legal tech so they can bolster existing practice areas and influence the legal tech of tomorrow, come along to the inaugural Women in Law Forum 2022. It will be held on 24 November at Grand Hyatt Melbourne. Click here to book your tickets and make sure you don’t miss out!

For more information, including agenda and speakers, click here.