Life after law: Career Leavers

Welcome to International Women's Day 2026.

Every year we mark International Women's Day (IWD), but why, exactly, do we need an IWD and what does it mean for women in the legal sector?

This article is the fourth and final in our series of articles exploring the topic of gender equality in the legal profession.

Not everyone agrees on marking one-off awareness days nor do we all agree on themes. But some facts are hard to ignore.

Based on 2025 data from the World Economic Forum, reaching full global gender parity is estimated to be at least 123 years away, placing the projected achievement date around the year 2148. Not in our lifetimes, our children’s or our grandchildren's - a sobering thought.

The report also highlights that no economy has yet achieved full gender parity. Iceland (92.6%) continues to lead the Global Gender Gap Index, holding the top position for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap since 2022.

But it's not all bad news. The UK ranked 4th globally, significantly improving from its previous position, with a gender gap closure score of 83.8%. This places the UK behind Iceland (1st), Finland (2nd), and Norway (3rd).

As for Scotland, while the World Economic Forum's above Global Gender Gap Report focuses on countries, Scotland is highlighted as the top UK region in PwC's 2025 Women in Work Index, ranking 1st within the UK, with strong female labour participation (75%) and a narrowing gender pay gap.

To mark IWD in the Scottish legal profession this year, we have chosen to shine a spotlight on the introduction, retention, and advancement of female talent in true diverse style.

In a series of four articles, we have looked at the facts and figures, trends and predictions at every level of the profession, followed by personal insights from female contributors from a wide range of backgrounds to provide a wide lens approach to the challenges facing and opportunities available to the profession in 2026 and beyond.

In this fourth article we look at the increasing number of women leaving the profession, why they are leaving and what they choose to do after a career in law.

Female Talent Leavers: Some facts and figures

The sandwich generation

The "sandwich generation" refers to middle-aged adults, typically women in their 40s to 60s, who are "sandwiched" between caring for their ageing parents and supporting their own children (or grandchildren), often while managing demanding careers and their own lives.

It is estimated that there are 1.4 million sandwich generation carers in the UK. That's 1 in 7 people in the workplace, with more than half aged 45–54.

Unsurprisingly, women make up the majority of sandwich carers at 61%.

Why are they ‘sandwiched’?

• Increased Lifespans: People live longer, often needing more care in old age.

• Later Parenting: Adults are having children later in life.

• Financial Pressures: Rising costs mean children often live at home longer, while elderly parents may need financial assistance to meet caring costs. 

The pressures the ‘sandwiched’ generation face:

• Juggling work, childcare, and eldercare.

• Significant financial strain from supporting multiple generations.

• Emotional stress and physical exhaustion 

They are also often the ones who leave demanding professional careers, such as law.

Hear from Katie McKenna about her research on why we are witnessing so many leavers.

Invisible Pressures: Why talent leaves

Despite increasing awareness of mental health challenges within the legal profession, many law firms and organisations employing solicitors continue to adopt largely reactive and passive interventions to support female staff. Access to employee assistance programmes that are underused and rarely promoted is often positioned as sufficient support, while proactive and preventative measures such as therapeutic supervision or structured reflective practice remain notably absent.

The interviews I conducted as part of my Master’s research (McKenna, 2024) highlighted a consistent and concerning theme: many women experienced a profound lack of employer accountability in relation to excessive workloads, alongside a scarcity of genuine, workable flexibility. Flexible working may exist in policy, but in practice it frequently fails to accommodate the realities of caring responsibilities and the cognitive and emotional load borne by working mothers and women with caring responsibilities.

In my client work at The Carvalho Consultancy, I regularly support female solicitors navigating the cumulative impact of sustained high pressure work while simultaneously managing demanding family obligations. With little opportunity to pause, regulate, or recover, self care is repeatedly pushed to the bottom of an already overwhelming to do list. This chronic depletion does not arise from individual fragility, but from patriarchal systems that normalise overextension and undervalue psychological sustainability.

The unrelenting movement towards a 24/7 ‘always available’ culture which appears to be standard practice and encouraged at leadership level gives little thought to how it disproportionately impacts women due to the unseen and often undervalued roles women play outside of the office as mothers, and carers (Collier, 2016). 

The most recent LawCare Impact Report (2025) reinforces this picture, showing that the majority of calls to the charity helpline come from women. While there are multiple reasons women may be more likely to seek help, this statistic is illustrative of a profession in which women are experiencing acute distress and are in urgent need of meaningful support.

Compounding these pressures is the persistent stigmatisation of mental health within the legal profession (Jones et al., 2020). Fear of disclosure remains widespread, driven by concerns about reputational damage and negative career consequences (Jones et al., 2020; LawCare, 2021; Law Society of Scotland, 2023, McKenna, 2024). Current discussion tends to focus on identifying problems as well as critiquing the systemic structures and mindsets that perpetuate them (Jones et al., 2020). Far less attention is given to practical, preventative strategies capable of creating psychologically safer and more sustainable legal workplaces.

Katie McKenna

Katie was a Solicitor for ten years working with Harper Macleod, Digby Brown and the Law Society of Scotland. Upon leaving the profession, she undertook a Masters in Intrgrative Counselling and Psychotherapy training with a rape and sexual abuse counselling service. Katie is now a Psychotherapist working for a consultancy providing therapy, training and coaching for the legal profession and is a volunteer for LawCare.

On a personal level, when she left the profession, Katie was experiencing high levels of anxiety and felt a distinct lack of support. Katie often wonders if she would have stayed in the legal profession had she been provided with access to counselling which could have assisted her to navigate the career with a little more self understanding and self compassion. Her lived experience strongly informs her work today and her commitment to supporting those working in high-pressure legal environments.

Changing my career path and going back to University was daunting but it was the best thing I have done for myself and I feel much more aligned in my new role.

Read how Rachael Bicknell left private practice to explore new opportunities

From commercial litigator to mediator

There are undoubtedly challenges for women working in the law and the evidence of women leaving the profession speaks for itself. There are opportunities too, particularly for those like me, who have found a way to channel their skills, training and work ethic into a new career. As the old adage goes; when one door closes, another opens. This has certainly been the case for me.

In 2019, upon returning from my second maternity leave I finally had the courage to admit that continuing in private practice was unsustainable. I was 12 years qualified and this feeling had been bubbling under the surface for a few years. It wasn’t solely driven by the shift in perspective that comes from life changing events such as having children.

For many years I had dreamed of partnership because that was my definition of professional success. Unexpectedly, maternity leave gave me time and space to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses, what I wanted my future to look like and what fulfilled me at work. I was brutally honest with myself. The excitement I once felt for litigation had been replaced by a real passion for negotiation, mediation and keeping cases out of court. I no longer wanted partnership; I wasn’t a team player, I didn’t like managing, training or delegating to people, and I was terrible at “playing the game”, as my peers always put it. I would obviously have made a terrible partner and ultimately, I would have been miserable if I had pursued it. I craved full autonomy and flexibility. For me it wasn’t just about whether I could work a 4-day week. I am, for better or worse, someone who thrives when I have complete control over my working patterns and the freedom to think creatively and explore ideas.

And in the back of my mind were the words of the partner I worked with for many years; “you are a born mediator”. From a born litigator, I had heard that as a backhanded compliment at the time. But in truth it was those words that gave me the courage to resign to give me the headspace I needed to simply think about other options, safe in the knowledge there was at least one person who believed I could be good at something else. So, that’s what I did; armed only with a daydream of self-employment and a life without time-recording.

Luckily for me, during that first week of unemployment, outside Nero, I bumped into an old friend and former colleague I’d not seen in 10 years. A few years earlier he had left corporate private practice to set up a highly successful consultancy business with a very impressive list of clients. Two hours later that serendipitous coffee had set the wheels in motion for what was to become, two months later, Squaring Circles. His words of wisdom had given me a newfound belief that my daydream could become a reality and that I could give myself permission to have a new definition of success.

My successful transition from law to self-employment as a commercial mediator is undoubtedly due to the skills I learned from my 14 years in commercial law firms. The legal profession is bursting with talent well beyond knowing the law. The skills cultivated in legal practice are far-reaching; working under pressure, case management, strategic thinking, problem solving, communication, networking and building relationships, not to mention resilience, unwavering self-discipline and exceptional work ethic. Invaluable skills for any career change and self-employment.

In the cut and thrust of law firm life, it’s easy to forget that a legal background can open many doors and lead to a fulfilling career outside private practice or even the law altogether. I can honestly say there can be a great life after the law.

Rachael Bicknell

Rachael is a commercial mediator at Squaring Circles. She mediates on a broad range of disputes including construction and engineering, professional negligence, real estate, insolvency, and family business related claims. She has mediated disputes with parties from the UK, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, the USA, Canada and Australia.

Creating Sustainability for a lengthy career in law

The evidence is clear: the combination of structural inflexibility, entrenched workplace cultures, and the invisible burdens of caregiving creates a professional environment in which many women cannot sustain long-term careers in law. The “sandwich generation” pressures, compounded by chronic overwork, emotional exhaustion, billing targets and inadequate mental health support, do not reflect individual weakness but systemic shortcomings.

Unless law firms move beyond tokenistic policies and reactive interventions toward genuinely flexible, preventative, and psychologically informed practices, the loss of female talent will continue to undermine not only individual careers but the profession’s diversity, resilience, and credibility. Supporting women in law is not merely a matter of fairness; it is essential for sustaining a competent and equitable legal profession.

This is the last of our series: from entering to leaving the legal profession, and everything in between.

Thank you for joining us and reading our International Women’s Day contributions. We hope it inspires you to champion gender equality in the legal profession and to actively support the retention, advancement, and empowerment of women lawyers at every stage of their careers, all year round.

To learn more about the services we can provide to help you and your firm reach your gender parity goals, please visit our Look Up and Beyond project website.