Becoming a Partner Before You're Promoted: A Roadmap for Women Lawyers

Summary

Cecilia Poullain shares practical strategies for women lawyers aspiring to partnership, emphasizing the importance of acting like a partner before promotion, building confidence, and strategic visibility. This episode offers actionable tips to help women lawyers navigate their career path with confidence and authenticity.

You can download the free guide on How to Make Partner in a Law Firm on  www.ceciliapoullain.com/free-guide

Key Topics

• Acting like a partner before promotion
• Building confidence and body language
• Strategic visibility and proactivity
• Learning from successful women partners
• Balancing authenticity and professional growth

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Cecilia Poulain. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast, where we talk about what it really takes to succeed as a woman lawyer in a law firm. I'm currently working with a number of incredible women lawyers. As soon as I met them, I knew they would become partners and be hugely successful when they got there. How did I know that? Because they were running their own shop. As my father used to say, they have their hands on the steering wheel. They know exactly what they want, and they're doing what it takes to get there. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast. My name is Cecilia Poulin, and I'm a former finance lawyer who now helps women lawyers to make it to partnership. In this podcast you'll get clarity on whether partnership is truly what you want, you'll build your confidence, and you'll master client development in a way that feels sustainable. Let's get you walking into the office every morning clear on why you're aiming for partnership free of imposter syndrome and confident in your ability to bring in clients without burning out. Let's jump in. I worked with a client a while back who had been a lawyer for over twenty years, but she still hadn't made partner. She was obviously a brilliant lawyer, but it was clear she lacked confidence as so many women lawyers do. But in her case this was evident in everything she did, in her posture, in the way she moved, in the way she preferred others to speak rather than stepping up herself. In this episode we'll look at why if you want to make partner, you need to act like a partner before you're promoted. If you don't start acting like a partner before you get there, then people have difficulty in imagining you as a partner, and like my client, you might get stuck as off counsel. Even if you're a brilliant lawyer, if you're not already acting like a partner in the way you turn up, in the responsibilities you take on, in starting to think as a partner would think, then the likelihood is that you won't ever be promoted. As I said in the very first episode of this podcast, partnership isn't for everyone. I know lawyers who are very happy to stay as off counsel. They don't want the pressure of partnership, they love the nitty gritty of the law, their salary is easily enough, and that is absolutely fine. As Sharon Lewis, who is the previous global head of finance at Hogan Lovells, said to me, People plateau, partnership isn't for everyone. But the tragedy is for lawyers who yearn to be partner but don't ever make it, who spend the remainder of their career feeling frustrated and humiliated that they didn't make it when others did, who feel that stab of pain year after year when younger lawyers are appointed over them. Now what do I mean by acting as a partner? Obviously not all partners are the same. Everyone has their own personality, their own way of doing things, but here are just a few ideas of how you might act as a partner before you're promoted. The first step is to start thinking as a partner would. Do you notice things that aren't going as well as they might? Are there any suggestions you could make? Any responsibilities you could take on? As your way of thinking shifts your behavior will naturally shift accordingly. Second, and I've said this a ton of times before, get proactive. Leaders are the ones who make decisions. And when you are the one who makes the decisions, there is always a risk that you'll be wrong. And that's where confidence comes in. You need to trust yourself enough to believe that the decisions you make are the right decisions, but also be flexible enough to discuss things with others and listen to them when they don't agree. It means taking action, whether it's to reach out to clients, to propose and organize clients' events, to take on more responsibility for coaching and training more junior lawyers, to make suggestions about training, to pay for your own training or your own conferences that are important to you, to bring people in the firm together. The current partners need to see what initiatives you're taking now in order to assess what initiatives you'll take when you're a partner. I'm currently working with a number of incredible women lawyers. As soon as I met them, I knew they would become partners and be hugely successful when they got there. How did I know that? Because they're running their own shop. As my father used to say, they have their hands on the steering wheel. They know exactly what they want, and they're doing what it takes to get there. They have taken a hundred percent responsibility for their careers. That's what being proactive is all about. As far as I know, these women don't have formal mentors or sponsors. They don't seem to need them. Third, see if you can identify any situations in which you are hiding behind the partnership. You need to be intelligent about this. It's not about hogging the limelight, speaking up when it's not appropriate or getting between partners and their clients, which is a very dangerous place to be. It's about noticing those situations in which you don't feel comfortable. Do you hate speaking in public? At business lunches, are you sitting there like a pot plant with nothing to say? Do you have your own system for keeping in contact with potential clients? Are you building your own client base? Do you let others make decisions without thinking through your own perspective and having the courage to share it? Notice those situations, then work out what you need to learn or practice in order to show up differently. Fourth, keep an eye on the women partners around you and notice what they're doing. What do you admire about them? Is that something you could try and forcise? Are they doing things that make you cringe or that you would never want to do? It's not about imitating them. It's about learning what works for them and trying it on. If it works, you can keep it, if it doesn't you can ditch it. I suggest keeping an eye on the women rather than the men in order to avoid adopting masculine codes of conduct, which rarely serve women. But it may be that there are male partners that you admire and who you can also learn from. And finally, think about what you're projecting by your body language. If like the client I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, your body language indicates that you aren't confident, then you need to work on that. And if your body language is indicating that you aren't confident, then the chances are you really aren't confident, and perhaps you need to find a way to build your confidence. You might like to go back and listen to episode six if you would like to learn more ways to do that. Unfortunately, people tend to promote far more on confidence than on competence, and for women this is a double whammy. People assume that even confident women are less confident than they are. I worked with someone many years ago who was extremely shy. She was the sort of person who would look at the ground and slide along the wall if you passed her in the corridor. In particular, she hated speaking in public. In one session I suggested she should choose someone to imitate when she was speaking to an audience. She chose Jean Luc Melanchon, then the theatrical French politician. And it was incredible. As soon as she pretended she was Mélenchon, her entire personality changed. She started using her arms, moving around the room, her voice was louder and more modulated. She looked incredibly confident. And most important of all, she was having a ball. It completely changed the way she turned up and her lived experience of speaking in public. That's just one example of how you can change your bodied language to project more confidence. So, five suggestions about how you might act as a partner before you become one. Think like a partner, get proactive, identify and work on situations in which you're hiding behind the partnership, keep an eye on what women partners and partners generally are doing, and think about what your body language is projecting. The more I speak on this podcast, the more I realise that things are rarely black and white. The difficulty is always in getting the balance just right, or at least right enough. So now I want to talk about how to get that balance right enough when you're thinking about acting like a partner. I worry that on this podcast I'm putting a whole lot more things on your plate. And you're probably thinking, hey Cecilia, I'm having trouble just getting through the workday, let alone doing all this extra stuff you're talking about. So please get strategic about it. When I talk about being proactive, it's not about taking on too much. It's about thinking about what you enjoy, what will give you more visibility, what will help your career. It's far better to do less and do it well than to take on too much and not to be able to deliver. And sometimes all you need to do is to make a suggestion and let other people do all the work. Here's an example. After COVID I was working with someone in one of the big law firms in Paris. And before COVID in her firm there'd been a regular breakfast meeting with the team, and that disappeared when everyone went into lockdown. She'd found those meetings useful and enjoyable. She simply asked the partner if she could organize them again. She then asked her assistant to do the invitations and book the conference room and do all the other administrative stuff. All in all, it took her about fifteen minutes. She did very little, but it showed that she was thinking like a partner. Second, it's not about stepping on people's toes. If you can see that something that needs doing, you need to judge whether you need to have a conversation with someone about it, or if you can just get on and do it. You might say to the partner something like, I'd really like to learn to run these meetings by myself. Is that okay with you? And can you be ready to jump in if I say something stupid? I recently spoke to a woman partner who got annoyed when younger lawyers took up too much space in meetings because she felt as though what the client really wanted was access to her. So if you were working with that particular partner, having that conversation would be absolutely vital. Third, it's not about fake it until you make it. It's about taking small steps outside your comfort zone, which will feel scary, but shouldn't feel overwhelming. Seeing how it feels, seeing how it works out, and seeing what you learn from it. It's about setting yourself small, achievable goals. Fourth, it's not about adopting male codes of conduct. Women often do this in male dominated environments because they find that if they don't, they aren't being listened to and they aren't accepted by the group. And just as a side note, even though there are many more women lawyers than men in many, many jurisdictions, a solid majority of partners are still men, which is why I would still characterize many law firms as male dominated. But adopting male codes of conduct can severely backfire. As Jill Whitty Collins says in her book Why Men Win at Work, women who start to act like men are seen as inauthentic and untrustworthy. In addition, it's exhausting to not be yourself, and it can lead to burnout. I often hear women being criticized because they just act like men. This is a serious double bind for women, which I will go into further in a later episode. Fifth, not every partner needs to be hugely charismatic and confident. Again, you need to find ways that work for you. Perhaps it's by being the person who sits quietly reading the room in a meeting, and intervenes only when they have something highly relevant to say that other other people haven't noticed. So that's it for this episode. We've talked about why it's important to act like a partner before you are one. I've made some suggestions about what acting like a partner might look like in practice, and we've talked about how to get the balance right when doing so, not doing too much, not stepping on other people's toes, not adopting male codes of conduct, and finding ways that work for you. And before I go, could I suggest that you take a few minutes to think about what your biggest priority would be for the firm if you did become a partner, and what you would do about it. You may or may not decide to act, but just doing the exercise will start you thinking like a partner. Thanks so much for joining me on the Pathway to Partnership Podcast. As always, I really appreciate it. I hope that this episode has helped you to think about how you might show up in your firm a little differently. And if you found this useful, please subscribe. Please share it with a colleague. Please leave a review so that together we can help more women make it to partnership and thrive when they get there. And if you'd like to stay in touch, head over to my website where you'll find a free guide called How to Make Partner with a list of the six biggest mistakes I see women lawyers making when they're going for partnership. Until next time, remember, you don't have to do this alone, and you get to define success as a woman lawyer on your own terms. Thanks so much for listening.