It is International Womens Day on 8 March 2020, a day in which the legal profession will be reflecting on how far away the industry is from achieving gender equality. To reach such a goal, law firms and organisations may be prompted to discuss pay equity, gender quotas, to the bullying and harassment of women that has been identified as an industry-specific problem. 

For episode six of the Thomson Reuters Change Makers Podcast, we invited Anthea McIntyre, owner and Director of McIntyre Legal to join us in the studio. We consider Anthea as a Change Maker and advocate for women in the law, because in addition to running a successful boutique law firm specialising in all areas of wills and estates, she is known for founding Lawyer Mums Australia, the Facebook forum for Australian lawyer mothers. Boasting 2,762 members and counting, the group offers a safe space for participants to connect with each other about their day-to-day experiences in the profession and as mothers. Anthea’s group is supported by Sharna Clemmett, a Sydney-based Barrister who is administering the Facebook group. 

Anthea McIntyre has carved out a significant online community that is well-loved by those who are part of it, including our very own Head of Commercial and In-House at Practical Law, Tyrilly Csillag. Tyrilly counts herself as a women lawyer who has reaped the benefits of Lawyer Mums Australia and joined Catherine Roberts, our regular host of the Change Makers Podcast on the program.

Lawyer Mums Australia was born out of Anthea's experience as a first time Mum and feeling isolated and lonely on 14 July, 2014. At this point in her life, she had a one-year-old and two-year-old and, yet while she loved being a mother, Anthea was missing the mental stimulation of being a corporate lawyer. She was yearning to get back into the legal workforce but couldn’t bring herself to put her little ones into daycare five days a week, because the ‘mother guilt’ was all too real. 

Anthea plugged ‘lawyer mums’ into Google and the search results were dire. An online formal support group for lawyer mums to connect with each other over their careers simply didn’t exist. So during the lunchtime hour that her babies were sleeping, she set up Lawyer Mums Australia on Facebook and invited three friends. The community grew to 200 in a week and the rest, as they say, is history. 

“We are a mixture of solicitors, Barristers, in-house counsel, legal consultants, we have Senior Counsel like Jane Needham who was recently on this program...women who are on maternity leave and just want to still feel connected to the legal community. And Gee, I wish I had access to a group like this when I was on...