Sexual harassment in the legal profession has been known to be different compared to other professions. There is a dilemma that is shared by Mr McKenzie, who views sexual harassment in the legal profession as a contradiction. 

“I am well aware of numerous reports and surveys that show the incidents of sexual harassment in the legal profession are very widespread,” Mr McKenzie said. 

“On the other hand, as the gatekeeper, I receive a minuscule number of formal complaints about such behaviour.”

VIEW ALL

Sexual harassment is widespread throughout the legal profession in surveys and reports from anonymous complaints, however, for an actual formal complaint, it is rarely if ever formally raised by women in the legal profession.

It is one of the main contributors to the code of silence that is reputable in the legal profession. 

Looking forward to 2020, Jim Kelly, director of Health and Safe design at SafeWork NSW, said it is crucial to address the problems prevalent in the legal profession, which contributes to an overall unhealthy work environment. 

The groundbreaking 2014 National Attrition and Re-engagement Study report commissioned by the Law Council of Australia has already reported a very high level of discrimination and harassment that existed. 

More importantly, it showed that the legal profession was losing an unacceptable proportion of several particularly smart, confident female lawyers at the mid-point of their careers certainly from private practice and the profession altogether.

The International Bar Association’s global survey of lawyers published last year showed Australia is ranked at the top of the countries around the world where female lawyers are suffering from bullying and one in three women are bound to have suffered sexual harassment during the course their career. 

There is also a pending report about to be released with a national inquiry by the Australian Human Rights Commission, with Kate Jenkins, sex discrimination commissioner leading the report.  

Mr McKenzie who had a chat with Ms Jenkins, said the pending results don’t look too good for the legal profession. 

“Having spoken to her in-depth,” Mr McKenzie said, “It appears the legal profession comes out badly compared to other professional services.”

With a very tight grip around law firms, a code of silence looms in the legal workplace culture, and there is no guarantee in the future if this will ever improve. 

Mr McKenzie said he had been on a personal discovery journey, realising that after 30-odd years of practice, he had been blind to a problem that was going on for so many years.

The major first step to change in the industry comes down to the responsibility and fundamentals of being a lawyer.  

“It goes back to legal fundamentals we pride ourselves as the defenders who help others exercise their rights and whether those rights are trampled upon, we provide advice and representation to those people,” Mr McKenzie said. 

“Yet we as the gatekeepers, the defenders of the rule of law are doing particularly badly in living up to this societal expectation, where this shouldn’t be happening in the places of work.”

It is the results from the 2014 report, that highlight the disappointing truth, according to Mr McKenzie, where the brightest female lawyers in their mid-careers move on because of this experience.

This has created a top-down effect leading to the uneven balance for women in law at the very top level of leadership in a firm. 

However, bringing change to this underlying dilemma leads to the debate of whether it is a regulation issue or an underlying cultural problem. 

Mr McKenzie has stated his position, believing that regulation alone cannot police sexual harassment, but from a change at a cultural level.

“I am a great believer in the legal profession but one of the unfortunate things about the profession is that it leans itself to the continuation of this unacceptable behaviour of sexual harassment through the profession’s hierarchical nature and rules-based system," Mr McKenzie said. 

“You expect that from lawyers and in this line of work, reputation is their very based asset, and it is the reputational damage that is used as a ‘sword hanging over the target person’s neck’.” 

“The code of silence therefore perpetuates and it certainly has its genesis in other factors such as gender equality both in pay rates and the lopsidedness of leadership in the profession.” 

Starting to shift more responsibility on the employers, to both create and enforce a change of culture of the workplace is needed, according to Mr McKenzie. 

“It’s clear to me that the reliance of individual complaints is not and has not done anything to dent the incidence of this particular behaviour,” Mr McKenzie said. 

“We need to start to move to a place where we direct more onus on all employers of the legal profession.

“To proactively improve the culture within the workplaces, to lead to the outcomes that we want and that is to decrease or eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace.”

At the upcoming project forum, the LSC’s new major project will aim to be the “catalyst” and start to make major changes for sexual harassment in the Australian legal workplace through the creation of a unique platform. 

More to come from Lawyers Weekly on what this project will entail.