Women And The Panopticon Of The Law (Part 1): Navigate The Smoking Club Rules
Five tips from a female Biglaw partner on how to survive -- and thrive -- in the male-dominated legal profession.
Ed. note: Please welcome our newest columnist, Jayne Backett, who will write about the legal world from her perspective as a female partner in a large law firm.
When I was ten years old, my father bought me a half set of golf clubs, so I could start learning the game. It was, to date, the greatest gift he ever gave me. Not just because I was able to learn to play golf (which was an incredible opportunity in itself), but because I spent my formative years navigating the smoking club rules.
When I was a young teen, British golf clubs fell into three categories as regards women:
The Business Case For AI At Your Law Firm
- Women Allowed (restricted) – you could play, but only at certain times, and you could come in the clubhouse, but only into certain rooms;
- Women Allowed (dire conditions) – your changing room was unheated, with no showers, it was located at the far end of the car-park and was home to a colourful selection of spiders, mice and squirrels; and
- No Women Allowed – yes, these places genuinely existed, you could not join, there were no women’s tees, no women’s changing rooms, and women were banned from the entire clubhouse.
The calamitous effect of The Equality Act 2010 was to outlaw discrimination in private clubs and associations, which forced them to change their ways. I remember some golf clubs dragging themselves kicking and screaming into the progressive world just a few years ago and only under duress, the threat of the loss of a bar licence looming if that club didn’t pull up its three-quarter-length argyle socks.
So, what did the old-school, all-male cigar room at the golf club teach me? It taught me some crucial lessons on what was needed to survive and thrive in a stuffy, male-dominated environment, most of which I have subsequently applied to my legal career. Here are five of the best:
1. There’s always an inner circle.
Sponsored
Navigating Financial Success by Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Maximizing Firm Performance
The Business Case For AI At Your Law Firm
Legal AI: 3 Steps Law Firms Should Take Now
Generative AI In Legal Work — What’s Fact And What’s Fiction?
Rule number one is to have the emotional intelligence to observe the politics and the interactions of the members and assess carefully whose views usually win out, then work out who are the people that actually make, enforce, and preserve the rules. Surprisingly, I rarely find this to be the person or the group with the obvious power title. There’s inevitably a set of back-channelling types who sit behind the scenes and have the real influence, and that’s what you need to suss out. It can take a while to get to grips with the identity of these people, but once you know who they are, you have to find an “in” with them. This will be your route to freeing yourself from the shackles of the regime in place and your pass to flex the rules in your favour without recrimination.
2. Respect the rules when there’s no mileage in breaking them.
My least favourite rule of the golf club was the rule about no shorts being worn above the knee – as if the knee were some kind of arousing and distracting part of the body, putting people (men?!) off their backswings – it meant excruciating shopping excursions for shorts of proportions that didn’t exist in the High Street shops, since no other sane teen girl would buy such a disgusting item. Eventually, I would retreat back to the pro shop and ask the club pro to order me the same shorts that Mildred or Dorris (who had been members since 1941) wore last week, and then I’d put them on and cry, looking at my calves peeping out between long shorts and high socks. It made for a fantastic set of tan lines. I learnt to suck it up and wear this heinous attire since the clucking and flapping that ensued if you tried to raise the hemline, mainly from the older female section of the club, was so fiercely counterproductive to your reputation that the rule break had no mileage. It was one that needed macro change and eventually, the professional women players and their fashion-forward sponsors started to move the boundaries, and most clubs have followed that lead. You have to learn when to toe the party line, even if it’s killing you inside.
3. If things don’t go your way, don’t scream at people about it.
This might sound like an attack on women being too emotional about issues, but it isn’t; this is my view generally, and it applies to how men deal with problems as well. I find that anyone who screams, stamps their feet, and throws their toys out of the pram rarely finds favour from their peers, and if you put people’s backs up, they won’t want to help you with your problem. Sometimes, you have to be persistent but patient with finding the right fix. It doesn’t mean always putting up and shutting up, but it’s about practical problem solving, it’s about taking a deep breath when you’re frustrated and using your best interpersonal skills to win votes for change. You have to talk to the influencers and help them see the benefit of taking any given course of action. When I started to play better at my club, I would win competitions, and it would mean I had a platform to speak. Mostly in my early speeches, I would just say thank you and abide the formalities but, as my confidence grew, I would use the speeches to plant eloquently worded seeds about changing attitudes, and I’d practice doing the same at club annual general meetings, speaking rationally about how things could be different.
Sponsored
Is The Future Of Law Distributed? Lessons From The Tech Adoption Curve
Generative AI In Legal Work — What’s Fact And What’s Fiction?
4. Performance means power.
Law firms and golf clubs work the same in this sense, the star performers in the organisation have an enhanced influence on the rest, and so one way to have influence over the majority quickly is to be phenomenal at what you do and to use that success to champion change. It sounds simple, but I see often (in golf and the law) that certain high flyers have become so focussed on their achievements that they forget that they can use their status for the greater good.
5. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.
If I am navigating the smoking room rules well, I am making constant assessments of my actions versus the perception others have of me, and things can become quite granular. I am endlessly on my toes, attuned to all of the sensitivities related to my progression – did I wear too much lipstick to last night’s event, should I have had that second glass of wine, what did people make of my thoughts on Donald Trump. It can be exhausting and draining to over-analyse. So don’t! When things are done, move on. If, on reflection, you genuinely believe (or are lucky enough to be told) that something wasn’t the best course of action last time around, then re-gear and manoeuvre things back to where you want them to be. Ultimately, those most engineered for adaptation will evolve and succeed, so don’t lose sight of the bigger picture on the way.
Jayne Backett is a partner at Fieldfisher LLP in London specializing in banking transactions, with a particular focus on real estate financing. Fieldfisher is a 600-lawyer European law firm, with a first-class reputation in a vast number of sectors, specifically, financial institutions, funds, technology and fintech, retail, hotels and leisure, and health care. Jayne has a depth of experience in mentoring and training junior lawyers and has a passion for bringing discussions on diversity in law to the forefront. She can be reached by email at jbackett@hotmail.com, and you can follow her on Twitter: @JayneBackett.
