International Women's Day

Last year, to mark International Women’s Day, I was asked by Resolution to set out my experiences as a family lawyer as it coincided with 25 years at Kingsley Napley. As someone who has been head of a wonderful team (comprising mainly but not exclusively women) for the last 10 years, this year, I thought I’d set out some of the themes I raised in my original blog.

So why have I stayed at Kingsley Napley all these years? In short, I love the people and the culture and I’ve been fortunate to be part of a firm that has encouraged my career and where I’ve never found being female a barrier to progression. I have also been fortunate to have excellent role models, in particular my longstanding colleague and fellow family lawyer (and former senior partner) Jane Keir, and our managing partner Linda Woolley (who has just won Managing Partner of the year at the Modern Law awards).  

From an early stage, the KN partners have always encouraged me to develop my interests and specialisms, and supported me to step outside of my comfort zone. I have sought to do that when encouraging the careers of my colleagues.

The KN Family team has grown organically with fantastic home-grown trainees and associates becoming partners but with brilliant lateral hires as well, and we are now a team of over 30. It is wonderful to see the impressive careers the team members have developed, and to feel that I have played a very small part in their retention and success.

While we have a real range of individuals in the team, in terms of characters, backgrounds and approach, what unites us is the care and commitment for the clients, the emotional intelligence throughout, the holistic approach and recognising the needs of the family not just the client. There’s also trust, openness and camaraderie between team members.

At KN, equality of gender is not something we have ever had to strive to address. Over 50% of our partners and over 70% of our lawyers are female.  But within the family team, like many other family law teams, where females outnumber men, ideally, we would have a few more men!

I’ve been fortunate that, since I joined KN in 1997, I have genuinely never felt there was any ‘glass ceiling’ nor that I had to change my personality ‘to fight my way to the top’ as you sometimes hear about other firms. Authenticity and diversity are encouraged at Kingsley Napley and I believe these attributes (along with our main values – Integrity & Fairness, Teamwork & respect, Understanding and Commitment), have, according to the Best Companies awards, helped us become the best law firm to work for in the UK –a success based purely on the results of our bi-annual employee survey. 

Of course, the passage of time has changed workplace attitudes. In my training contract at my previous firm, 30 years ago, I remember the odd disapproving and sexist comment (for example about women wearing trousers) which in those days remained unchallenged.

And 12 years ago,  when I became equity partner, I recall being surprised when one former colleague remarked ‘That’s good of the firm, offering you equity when you work part time’ – in my naivety it had just not occurred to me that being a mum working part-time with young twins would be an issue when of course for many firms that could well be a barrier to senior roles. I also remember another family lawyer (a male who was close to retirement) showing real surprise when I said that I would be coming back to work following the birth of my children – he clearly expected me to become a full-time mother. 

I realise that my career route will have been a lot easier than for many female lawyers, given that gender has genuinely not been a bar to success at KN. At KN I have worked with lots of inspiring female lawyers and the firm allowed me to develop the confidence to say what I have needed at different times of my life and has therefore seen the best of me while at the same time supporting me during the tough times of my life (e.g. when I separated from my former husband with two toddlers, moving cities in the process). Routinely, partners at KN have been offered partnership during maternity leave and I was offered equity partnership when my twins were 18 months old and when at the time (pre-pandemic) I was present in the office two and half days a week. Nowadays, at KN and I’m sure at most firms, we expect our lawyers to return from maternity leave and that expectation, along with proper support and flexibility, in terms of practice not just policy, has undoubtedly the biggest impact on retaining working parents.

I am fortunate that, by being at the right firm for me, I have never had to pretend to be anything other than I am. I consider I am open and authentic in how I approach people at all levels including clients and, while of course we all adjust between our professional and personal lives, for me the differences are quite small. This has helped, rather than hinder, my career. The more senior I’ve become, the more open I am about my own vulnerabilities and challenges, something which has been encouraged at KN and which has I believe helped me be a good manager.

In terms of my own position, as a female lawyer, and manager of a predominantly female team, undoubtedly over the years I have seen great differences in how men and women approach our work. I have been fortunate in having personally experienced excellent female and male leadership, which is important given that, in relation to their outward confidence and language, men and women can be very different. I recall specifically one female colleague who kindly reviewed my equity application, passing me an academic article which showed that I wrote exactly ‘like a woman’ in terms of how I was understating my achievements due to my worry that I would come over as arrogant. So, the red pen came out, deleting all the ‘I consider’, ‘I believe’ and ‘I think’ so it became ‘I am’, words of wisdom I have passed on many times (but which I still struggle with).

Likewise (and forgive me for generalising), while I have become used to encouraging women to believe more in themselves, to push them out of their comfort zone or soften any constructive criticism due to sensitivities, I’ve also learnt that, when I give feedback or communicate with men, I’ve had to be more direct than perhaps feels comfortable, so the message is clear and understood (but bearing in mind that men can be just as sensitive).

The network of family lawyers (including several inspiring women) which I’ve developed over many years (nationally and internationally) has certainly helped me in my daily practice and I welcome the focus on well-being, mentoring and supervision initiatives that are now being promoted. The other day, in an interview I was asked to suggest one small thing that we could all do to ‘embrace equity’, the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day. I suggested that all of us could give time to others who reach out for advice or support, be it teenagers or university students (around career choices) or those in other areas who are thinking of changing direction (in my case into family law) or simply thinking of changing firms. The death of Madeleine Albright almost a year ago reminded me of her famous quote (which certainly doesn’t apply to senior women at KN) “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”.

further information

If you have any questions regarding this blog, please contact Charlotte Bradley in our Family team.

About the author

Charlotte has been head of the Family team at Kingsley Napley since 2013. She specialises in all aspects of family law, particularly international issues, both in relation to finance and children. Charlotte has a reputation for cross border jurisdiction issues, particularly European and Relocation cases, and for acting for unmarried parents in Schedule 1 (financial provision) cases. She is also an accredited mediator and collaborative lawyer, working with high profile and high net worth couples keen to resolve their separation in private.