8 out of 10 partners in the largest law firms are men. His assistants are exclusively women – E24

From the top floor of the premises of the largest law firm in the country, you have an unsurpassed view of the city and the Oslo Fjord.

Here, Kristin Henriksen Langholm and Wenche Helbostad have started a round of soccer matches.

Langholm is one of 15 Wikborg Rein project assistants, Helbostad is his superior. The latter has been with the company for 22 years. He has never seen a man in the role of Langholm.

E24 has mapped the gender balance among paralegals at the 20 largest law firms in the country. Together, they have a turnover of more than ten billion crowns. The survey shows that there are 146 paralegals and one male employed part-time.

“We’ve talked about it from time to time, that it would be nice with more men,” says Langholm.

It’s been 17 years since the 40-year-old started out as Wikborg Rein’s secretary. You remember two men from the legal secretary program, but they fell on the road.

– It’s probably still a traditional secretarial profession that men didn’t find tempting, but the position has become something else entirely. Ten years ago, for example, we visited the print center a lot, now we work much more closely with the IT department.

No longer secretary

Otherwise, it’s empty on the eleventh floor of the law firm, where Langholm can gleefully stretch his right hand in the air after scoring. Last year more than 100 events were held here, now the reality is different.

Employees continue to work and are home two days a week.

However, Covid-19 is not the starting point of our visit. We want to talk about a gender balance that cannot be skewed.

Among the 20 largest law firms in the country, there is not a single full-time male paralegal. One man out of a total of 150, or close to 300 if secretarial qualifications are also counted, works part-time alongside his studies.

We don’t have male candidates, but I think if I had seen one, I would have put him at the top of the list right away. Because we really welcome the guys, says Wenche Helbostad, Head of Project Assistants and Office Services at Wikborg Rein.

For this to happen, the industry must do more to communicate what the position entails, he admits. That’s why Wikborg Rein got rid of the secretary title in 2018. Kristin Henriksen Langholm is now the project assistant.

– Classic secretarial tasks are no longer part of the job. That is why we must completely move away from that title, says Wenche Helbostad.

Association without male members

A few decades ago, the workflow at a law firm was completely different. Lawyers dictated while secretaries sat in clean writing rooms and wrote the words on paper.

Now lawyers write themselves and the roles and titles of secretaries have changed. In Wikborg Rein she is called a project assistant, in others there are paralegals, paralegals and similar variants.

The only thing that is protected by the profession is the title of DNA paralegal. It shows that you have undergone continuous training approved by the Norwegian Bar Association.

The study provides competence to perform certain forms of legal work, unlike what an associate attorney can do, explains Gry Helen Staangstad, leader of the Association of DNA Legal Assistants. It has no male members.

She records that there are many women throughout the legal profession. This fall, two out of three new law students in Oslo were women.

– Maybe men have to become assistants when no one becomes a lawyer, he jokes.

Still making coffee

Staangstad works for a law firm in Hamar. Here the dimensions are on a different level than at Vika Terrace in Oslo, where the three largest, Wikborg Rein, Thommessen and Schjødt, have arranged their facilities in a row. Size affects attendees’ job duties, he says.

– In Oslo, the attendees are more specialized, while we who are in small companies still make coffee for meetings, in addition to everything else.

– Is the skewed gender balance a problem?

– I don’t think there are lawyers who see it as a problem. In general, of my generation, few men took up office education. It might be interesting to know how children are encouraged to apply there now, says the 61-year-old.

But if the boys of the new generation want the opportunity at all, Staangstad is not sure.

– The profession may be about to disappear. More and more places do not have secretaries or assistants.

7 female couples, 60 men

At Wikborg Rein, it is clear to them that the positions held by the 15 project assistants play a central role for the company.

– I think it has not been communicated how business critical these jobs really are. You probably suffer from the historic concept of the secretary, says COO Martin Bentzen.

He believes that neither the industry in general nor Wikborg Rein in particular have been good enough to market the role as exciting, also in terms of development.

– It’s a problem. We have diversity high on the agenda, says Bentzen.

– In this way, such a bias will not be compatible with our ambitions as a company.

The focus on diversity has led the billion-dollar company to achieve an overall female participation of 54 percent and more than double the number of female partners since 2018.

From 3 to 7. From 67.

This gives a female participation of 10 percent. In the rest of the industry, the average is 15 percent.

But even though the stats have only slightly improved from what Wikborg boss Rein characterized as “almost a bit embarrassed” to Advokatbladet in 2018, the arrow is pointing at least in the desired direction at the partner level.

– If you look at the statistics, it is clear that we have not achieved the same on the assistant side. We’ve taken action with the role description and title, but it hasn’t delivered the results we expected, so we need to keep working on it, says Martin Bentzen.

– What does that mean?

– It is important that we work closely with the educational institutions that prepare those who will enter these roles on what to expect. And maybe we should also think about how we can coordinate across the industry to get an additional effect than we think would be enough.

Signs of a problem

Bar Association leader Jon Wessel-Aas believes there are almost always signs of a major or minor problem if there is a poor gender balance in the workplace, if there is no reason for it to be.

– In the legal industry, we still have a problem at the partner level with few women, especially in more corporate law. Then there have been major changes on the employee side, and ideally there should be an even distribution among office workers. But at least I’m pretty sure that law firms don’t discriminate in the hiring process.

– With men at the top and women in lower-ranking occupations, you have a classic metoo recipe. What do you know about the scope?

– There have been very few cases of metoo, says Wessel-Aas.

– At the same time, it is completely naive to believe that the law industry should be particularly much better than others and there are very few cases of public knowledge. I’m not saying that I think there are a lot of scary conditions, but it has been too few to give the full picture.

– When we look for new employees, we are concerned that they have digital competence and the ability to familiarize themselves with new solutions, says Wenche Helbostad.

– It is also a profession of boys today.

Attractive among students

E24 has used law firm websites with presentations from its own employees to get an overview of the gender balance among corporate paralegals.

Among 150 people with various forms of assistant titles, Reidar Johansson is the only man. But after working full-time last semester, he’s now a part-time employee and, as he points out, there are probably more men in other companies in similar roles, but not found on the website.

Therefore, it is more correct to say that there are no full-time male paralegals in the 20 largest law firms in the country.

– I do not mean that the role of paralegal is considered a typical female profession among law students. In general, it is attractive for students to get a job at a law firm in order to gain knowledge and experience within the profession, in addition to having established themselves within, says Johansson.

The 22-year-old from Heim in Trøndelag has studied law for two years. For the past six months, he was on leave from his studies while working full time at Schjødt.

Johansson says he was unfamiliar with the low proportion of men going missing. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal.

– You work in different positions and basically it is about doing a good job.

– Do you have any idea what the companies themselves could have done to recruit more men?

– Nothing concrete. It is probably important to see that a paralegal position can be attractive and involves much more than just “helping” the attorneys.

Young people don’t want to stand out

Bias among paralegals shows an interesting side to our society, says Fafo researcher Ragnhild Steen Jensen.

– Norway is an egalitarian country, but we have a highly gender-segregated labor market.

In general, you can explain the patterns by saying that many career choices are made when you are between 15 and 16, an age and time when you are not particularly happy to stand out, says Steen Jensen.

– We see that young people make very traditional educational choices, especially in professional matters, it is clear.

Fafo’s researcher says it’s hard to point the teaching finger at law firms, all the time the bias is related to culture and deeper explanations.

– They probably want men too, so I’m not sure what to expect from them beyond doing job ads and the like that are attractive to both genders.

At the same time, the gender balance in various occupations has completely changed in recent decades. So what can experience have an effect on?

– I think maybe the extra points in the studies have had some effect, but I have less faith in the attitude campaigns. The changes we have seen have been primarily about women choosing traditionally male-dominated high-status occupations. This is probably easier to achieve than the reverse, says Ragnhild Steen Jensen.