Two partners of top firms in Australia have done the country proud in a survey of the top women lawyers around the world.
Gina Cass-Gottlieb of Gilbert + Tobin (G+T) and Rebecca Maslen-Stannage of
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) have been proclaimed “Female Star Talent” by Acritas in its annual “Acritas Stars” survey.
Cass-Gottlieb also drew the most nominations among the 13 awardees from around the world.
Acritas compiled the list of leading women lawyers worldwide after spotting gender bias in their survey’s nominations. Over the last three years, the company has accumulated more than 10,000 nominations of leading lawyers from firm clients. More than 8,000 lawyers were identified by 4,300 clients.
Gina Cass-Gottlieb
Rebecca Maslen-Stannage
Despite clients rating male lead partner performance on par with female lead partner performance on every performance attribute, Acritas’ data showed that male clients were half as likely to nominate a female star lawyer.
The quality of expertise was the main reason lawyers were nominated for both genders. Female lawyers on average even had a higher number of qualities mentioned in the nominations. Female lawyers were also more recognised for responsiveness, approachability, professionalism, and diligence.
Despite this, only 15% of nominees named by male general counsel were women. Among all nominees, 29% were women. Since 2015, just 1,000 of the 8,000 nominations from clients are female lawyers.
This year’s awardees are:
Partner, competition and regulatory,
G+T (Sydney, Australia)
Partner, Corporate and M&A
HSF (Sydney, Australia)
Partner, Labour and employment disputes
Partner, Advertising and marketing
Gowling WLG (Toronto, Canada)
Partner, Private equity M&A
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (New York, USA)
Member of the firm, Antitrust and regulatory
Epstein Becker & Green (Washington, DC, USA)
Partner, Competition and antitrust law
Barbosa, Müssnich, Aragão (São Paulo, Brazil)
Partner, Dispute resolution
Fieldfisher (Birmingham, UK)
Partner, Corporate and M&A
Partner, Competition
Partner, Litigation and regulatory
Senior partner, Corporate
AZB & Partners (Mumbai, India)
Partner, Banking and finance
Mayer Brown JSM (Singapore)
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