Aird & Berlis law firm narrows pay gap between male and female equity partners

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Aird & Berlis, the first and still only major law firm in Canada to voluntarily release its gender pay gap numbers, has seen the compensation divide between male and female equity partners narrow dramatically in the past year.

There is now an 8-per-cent divide between what men and women at that level make, a significant improvement from the past analysis, which showed a 17-per-cent disparity.

“We were pleasantly surprised,” said managing partner Steven Zakem. “Whether that’s sustained or it pauses, or whether there’s any slippage, it’s hard to tell. Two years does not make a trend. We will have greater clarity next year.”

Mr. Zakem says the firm hasn’t made any significant changes in the past year that would have led to this improvement. He attributed it to some high-performing women partners having record years.

Aird & Berlis first calculated and publicized its gender wage gap figures in 2021, after reporting in The Globe and Mail about large pay inequities in the Canadian legal sector, including stories that revealed the extent of the gap at two prominent Bay Street law firms.

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After reviewing confidential pay reports at Cassels Brock & Blackwell and Blake, Cassels & Graydon, The Globe determined that both firms had a gender wage gap of about 25 per cent among equity partners; a divide that amounted to around $200,000 at Cassels and about $370,000 at Blakes annually for the average female equity partner at those firms.

Prior to this reporting, the extent of the gender wage gap at large private law firms in Canada had been a mystery, because firms in this country have never agreed to share the information. However, this type of disclosure is routine in the United States and mandatory in Britain.

During this period in early 2021, The Globe reached out to the 25 largest law firms in Canada to see if they would be open to releasing wage gap data. Of those, 20 said they would be open to sharing the information with an independent third party for research purposes, similar to what happens in other countries.

However, it appears no third party has yet to ask. (In the United States, for example, many large firms voluntarily participate in an annual compensation survey from the National Association of Women Lawyers. When the Canadian Bar Association’s Women Lawyers Forum tried to do something similar several years ago, law firms declined to participate.)

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Aird & Berlis chose to proactively release its figures, but to date, no other major law firm in Canada has followed that lead.

Lawyer Erin Durant, who has been loudly calling for more aggressive action on the wage gap in the legal sector and who was recently named one of Canadian Lawyer’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers, says she’s frustrated that firms are waiting for a third party to come asking.

“They should do the right thing and release it themselves,” said Ms. Durant, who in 2021 left Borden Ladner Gervais to start her own firm, Durant Barristers.

In seeing the numbers for the first time in 2021, Mr. Zakem said he was struck by the fact that when only equity partners who had been practising for two decades or less were considered, the pay gap completely disappeared. In fact, it was the women who made slightly more. This gave the firm hope that the pay differences would narrow naturally through retirements and the career acceleration of a new, more diverse crop of partners – who were being better supported through modern, equitable policies and practices.

Mr. Zakem said the latest gender analysis supports this thinking. He attributed the current progress to several high-performing women taking big leaps up the compensation grid.

“We’re about a third women, two-thirds men [at the equity-partner level]. So if you have three or four women who maybe take a big jump and three or four men who take a big jump, the impact of a woman getting an increase will be more pronounced.”

Earlier this year, Aird & Berlis’s efforts to build a more equitable workplace were recognized with the prestigious Chambers award for Outstanding Canadian Firm of the Year in the area of diversity and inclusion.

But Mr. Zakem stressed that the firm knows it still has lots of work to do. For example, he said he is unable to discuss the pay disparities between white and racialized equity partners, because there are so few of the latter that doing so would violate their privacy. Hiring more diverse talent – and retaining that talent – is a major priority for the firm, he said.

“The biggest issue is not our desire or action in hiring diverse candidates, it’s keeping them because every firm in the city is trying to diversify their work force,” Mr. Zakem said. “We’ve had success in our first few years of practice, we’ve got a very diverse associate pool now. The trick is that they are supported, mentored, trained … and that they feel a part of the firm and stay.”

Andrea Skinner, who chairs Aird & Berlis’s diversity and inclusion committee, said the firm’s work on tracking the gender wage gap is part of a larger diversity and inclusion strategy. In one new initiative, the firm recently expanded its parental-leave policies to six months of paid leave. Before, a birth parent was given five months and a non-birth parent only had one month. The previous policy also only applied to lawyers at the firm. The new one additionally includes other office staff.

(Ms. Skinner, who had been interim chair of Hockey Canada until she resigned from that position Saturday, declined to comment on the organization in this interview, which was conducted last month.)

Ever year, the firm conducts a diversity and equity survey, and based on the responses, she and her team craft a roadmap with key priorities. Those priorities are then shared with everyone.

“Being transparent and accountable are so important: They build confidence in the strategy and allow us to make course corrections as we receive feedback. Tracking the gender wage gap and sharing our analysis publicly is part of this commitment,” Ms. Skinner said.