Female lawyers bet on single-gender firms to break glass ceiling
An increasing number of lawyers have stopped working for traditional law firms to set up their own women-only offices. The reason is simple. They already account for almost half of the country's lawyers - 581,527, compared to 592,262 male lawyers, according to the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) - but are still at a disadvantage in leadership jobs at law firms and legal departments.
In Paraná state, for example, there are 1,841 law firms comprised exclusively of women. The state's OAB was the first to allow, in 1994, the "female law firm" nomenclature. In Bahia, there are already 712 firms formed only by women, in Rio de Janeiro state there are 609 and in Ceará, 353. São Paulo, the largest OAB section, does not disclose these data.In 2016, lawyers and feminist activists Ana Paula Braga and Marina Ruzzi decided to found Braga e Ruzzi Sociedade de Advogadas, one of the first in Brazil to specialize in women's cases and to defend only women. "There was nothing like this in the market and since we are part of feminist movements, we realized that there was a demand from women who suffered violence and wanted lawyers who were more sensitive to their causes," Ms. Braga says. The idea, according to Ms. Ruzzi, was to bring together various areas such as criminal and family law to advise this public on the most diverse fronts.
Fabíola Marques and Cláudia Abud took 25 years to realize a desire that has existed since the beginning of the firm's foundation: to register it as a female-only firm. Today, the firm is called Abud Marques Sociedade de Advogadas. "Our project from the very first moment was to emphasize that we are lawyers. At the time of the foundation, however, we thought that instead of being favorable the idea could drive away clients," Ms. Marques says. The will was materialized in the 25th anniversary of the firm. "Now, more than ever, there is the need to show the world that we have gained our space alone," says the lawyer who has already served as president of OAB São Paulo's Female Lawyer Committee and was the first woman to chair the Association of Labor Lawyers of São Paulo.
Having the name "advogada," or "female lawyer" in Portuguese, was not easy. Some firms have encountered resistance from state sectionals to register this way. In November 2018, however, OAB's federal council solved the problem and authorized the registration as Sociedade de Advogados (lawyer firm), Advogadas (female-lawyer firm) or Advocacia (law firm).
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