Sexual Harassment in Law

In June 2020, an independent investigation found that a former judge sexually harassed at least six junior associates during the decade he worked at the High Court of Australia.

In a statement issued after the investigation, Chief Justice of the High Court, Susan Kiefel, said that the findings were of "extreme concern" and that she and her staff were "ashamed this could have happened at the High Court of Australia".

Disturbingly, this is not an isolated incident, with research suggesting that sexual harassment is rife across all levels of the legal profession and has been for some time.

A 2019 International Bar Association survey of nearly 7,000 lawyers from 135 countries found that about 47% of Australian female respondents said they had been sexually harassed at work, compared to 37% globally. Another 2019 survey of nearly 250 people conducted by the Women Lawyers Association of NSW (WLANSW) found that more than 70% of female lawyers had experienced some form of sexual harassment, including unwelcome touching, advances, and objectification in the workplace or at social events.

The survey also found that women were not reporting these incidents due to fears about how it could affect their careers.Although there has been much discussion about how women have been treated in the legal profession over the past 30 years, not enough progress has been made to fully address sexual harassment, says Dr Ashlee Gore, a criminologist who specialises in gender and violence at Western Sydney University’s School of Social Sciences.

"It’s becoming increasingly obvious that very little has changed," says Gore. "The law is something people turn to in order to fix some of these problems, but yet, it is itself complicit in a lot of these practices."

After studying law herself and speaking with friends who had left the legal profession due to sexual harassment, Gore wanted to better understand how these incidents affect women’s experience as they embark on a career in the field, or decide to leave it. 

In 2021, Gore sat down with 10 women aged from 19 to 33 to have a conversation about what first motivated them to study law, their experiences working in the legal industry, and how they defined and understood sexual harassment. The participants ranged from students to working lawyers who had left the profession due to sexual harassment. Only one woman, a solicitor in the financial sector, was currently working in the field.

While Australia’s legal definition of sexual harassment focusses on unambiguous advances, such as unwanted touching, requests for sex, and sexually explicit emails or texts, Gore’s research participants said they experienced subtler, everyday intrusions that could easily be brushed off as "normal".

This suggested that sexual harassment in the profession is often more ambiguous than its legal definition, says Gore.

"There was this constant pervading sense that something wasn’t right in the way they were being treated," she says. "But it wasn’t overt enough in their minds to justify making a complaint, and it set up this culture of being normal."

One participant, who has since left the field, said that she felt undermined, as her boss’s behaviour didn’t quite fit the legal definition of sexual harassment and her colleagues turned a blind eye to his behaviour. For instance, the boss dictated a strict dress code for female employees, such as wearing skirts, high heels, and blouses. If they came to work in pants and flat shoes, she said he would fly into a rage. The boss also called his female staff his "harem".

The law firm’s toxic and mysoginistic culture made Gore’s interviewee feel traumatised, and it wasn’t until after she left the legal profession to work in the domestic violence sector that she realised what she had experienced: coercive control.

"She had this constant anxiety in her stomach about going to work," says Gore. "But she struggled to pinpoint an incident where she could say, 'Well that’s sexual harassment, I could report him for that'."

In other cases, race shaped how young women were sexually targeted by their colleagues. One participant talked about a network of male barristers who focussed their attention on young female lawyers of Asian heritage. She told Gore that the group often reached out to Asian women to "mentor" them, but that their motivations were often far more sinister. "They were basically looking to pressure these young women into sex," says Gore.

Such experiences weren’t restricted to the workplace. One law student told Gore that a male student had touched her during class and sent her inappropriate text messages. "It was making her really uncomfortable and disrupted her learning," says Gore.

When the woman approached her university counsellor to get advice on what she could do about the situation, she was told that filing a complaint against her perpetrator — who was an international student — could jeopardise his visa. The woman left the counsellor’s office feeling responsible for the person who was making her uncomfortable.

Her experience offered a snapshot of how sexual harassment in the legal profession often becomes normalised before lawyers are even working on their first case, says Gore. "They’re already being unintentionally socialised to say, 'Well this is not a big deal, get over it'," she says.

It’s a sentiment that lasts long after graduation, leading to a pervasive 'sink or swim' culture, says Gore. For some of her interviewees, experiencing sexual harassment made them wonder if they simply weren’t cut out for the profession, or that they just needed to tough it out.

One young ex-lawyer told Gore that an older female colleague gave her the advice that she had to learn to be the bigger voice in the room. This is concerning, as it sends the message that women are the problem because they don’t have a thick enough skin, says Gore.