How can women improve their partnership prospects?

Next is positive discrimination but this is dangerous territory for all sorts of well-aired reasons. Nevertheless, men dominate the decision-making in top law firms and some will argue that until women are better represented at partner level, they will continue to get the thin end of the wedge.

This leads on to the third issue of unconscious bias — the elephant in the room.

Men are the dominant brand in law firms. People like working with people like them, that is, other men.

From the start of their careers therefore, men may be offered more interesting or challenging work, get better deal experience and be associated with more influential people in the firm. As a result, women can end up comparing unfavourably, both in terms of experience and profile.

Real transparency needs to be built into the training, selection and assessment process at all levels. The criteria against which trainees and associates are judged needs to be spelt out clearly, discussed honestly and enforced rigorously to ensure equality.

Studies show that if people are aware — and are constantly made aware of the tendency towards unconscious bias — it is much less likely to happen.

Women tend not to be as aggressive as men at self promotion. It is not just that women fail to achieve visibility by acting this way but their behaviour is often interpreted negatively by men, consciously or not, as lacking in commitment, ambition or confidence. Women that do act as men can be perceived as aggressive and domineering.

While a strong profile — internal as well as external — and an identifiable brand are of fundamental importance, deliberate programmes to achieve them will only ever meet with partial success.

If women are not comfortable with their new more “self-salesy” approach, they will fail the authenticity test and this impacts massively on their ability to build personal trust.

Programmes of this type may well be more about ticking the boxes than achieving lasting change. To succeed, any programme is really going to have to get under the skin of basic behaviours.

Women should definitely use their excellent communication skills to expand their networks, though they also need to understand the power in business of the male-style network (one of many acquaintances), over the female-style (one with fewer but deeper relationships).

Women should also understand the importance of developing their own brand — a unique selling proposition that differentiates them as individuals.

This should draw on all their innate abilities, for example communication skills, relationship building, intuition, instinct and collaborative teamwork where they frequently have the edge on men, and not forgetting the opportunity for visual distinction they have which is pretty much denied to men in the business context.

Ultimately, much of this boils down to strategies designed by men to reward male characteristics and strengths.

While most people accept that men and women are different in many respects, a male-orientated set of selection criteria disadvantages women candidates.

Firms should select female partners on their own strengths, accepting how important they are to the success of the business. Not a two-speed system or an artificially levelled playing field but an acknowledgement that over and above technical merit, men and women have different abilities, characteristics and skills-sets, all of which need to be represented in the partnership.

The author is the managing director of The Influence Business, the leadership training company