Women managing partners in the legal profession should not be an anomaly and on Thursday, September 6, Littler Mendelson partner Constance Norton, and Yolanda Jackson, executive director and general counsel of the Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF), hosted a reception at Littler to make this a reality. An intimate group of prominent women—managing partners and in-house counsel—were invited to meet and recognize how few women exist in this space.  Out of approximately two hundred and fifty law firms in San Francisco, only twenty-five— just ten percent— have women as managing partners.

The event parallels the revitalization of BASF’s Women’s Committee, which seeks to highlight the issues that women encounter in the profession and create safe spaces to dialogue and problem-solve. The committee’s current focal areas include lawyer lifestyle, policy, communications and special projects, and male impact. On the policy front, an interesting development in alignment with the committee’s focus includes California’s SB 826, a measure to encourage equitable and diverse gender representation on every corporate board. The measure would require at least one woman on the board of directors for each publicly-held corporation in California and thus help break the corporate glass ceiling. Committee co-chairs Isabelle Salgado of AT&T and Blair Walsh, Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, are also organizing a Women’s Conference this November to reinforce and reignite the committee’s presence—stay tuned to www.sfbar.org/calendar for details.

More photos from this event can be found on BASF’s Facebook page.