Sexual harassment in the legal industry – are we improving?

Besides taking the typical risk-mitigation steps to manage sexual harassment complaints in the workplace, law firm managers need to pursue a series of actionable measures to stamp out such troubling incidents, writes Leonie Green.

We are told that one in four women experience sexual harassment at work, while working  within the Australian legal industry.

That sounds like a statistic we need to respond to as an industry. And yet it’s not a new one. It comes from a study in 2013. What have we done since then?

At best, we have rolled out training, we have regularly reviewed our policies and procedures, and acted when complaints are made. We did that pre-2013, too.

That is the minimum required to adequately defend the vicarious liability portion of a sexual harassment claim. The minimum. It’s a risk-minimisation approach that enables you to sleep okay at night. It does not address the systemic issues and, unless approached holistically from an ongoing cultural change perspective, such actions will not make much difference between training sessions and policy rollouts.

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