Trish Mundy

Engendering ‘Rural’ Practice: Women’s Lived Experience of Legal Practice in Regional, Rural and Remote Communities in Queensland

The experience and marginalised status of women lawyers within the Australian legal profession has been well documented over the past two decades. However, very little is known empirically about the ways in which ‘rural’ space and place might transform or impact that experience, and their relationship with the retention of women in rural, regional and remote (RRR) practice. This article reports on a phenomenological study of the lived experience of female solicitors practising in RRR communities in Queensland. The study asked 23 solicitors (male and female) about their experience of life and legal practice in their communities. This article concludes that women’s practice experience is more complex, and shaped by a distinctive gender experience. It highlights the role that socio-cultural constructions of gender and ‘rurality’ can play in the negotiation of women’s legal practice experience and considers the implications of this for their retention to practice.

Diversity policies meet the competency movement: towards reshaping law firm partnership models for the future

ABSTRACT Globalisation, commercialisation, and economic pressures following the global financial crisis have produced a ‘new normal’ for the practice of law in private firms, requiring reassessment of the range of skills necessary for success. Scholarship in the ‘competencies movement’ has responded to this need for skills reassessment. At the same time, research and scholarship focused on increasing diversity and inclusion in law firms has blossomed. However, little attention has been paid to analysing synergies in the competencies and diversity movements, and there have been calls for more collaborative research between academics, firms and professional bodies in response to issues of diversity and inclusion. This article presents a collaborative research project between law firms, the Women Lawyers Association of New South Wales, and the Legal Intersections Research Centre at the University of Wollongong on current best practices in diversity in large Australian law firms. It argues that such collaborative projects, with a focus on synergies between the competencies and diversities movements, provide the greatest potential for reshaping law firm practice and partnership models to respond to issues of advancement, attrition, and lack of re-engagement, particularly by women in law firms.