Left to right: Ahmed Shaaban, Jennifer Warner, Lisa Harrington, Olga Rodstein and Janet McCarthy. Photo credit: Caroline Spiezio

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's focus on gender equity in the legal field carried over to the second day of its annual institute, with a Monday morning panel featuring big name female GCs talking about how they deal with outside counsel.

Moderator Ahmed Shaaban, founding member of legal tech firm Fulcrum Global Technologies, spoke with a panel of four female in-house leaders about what they're looking for in outside firms and how that's changed over time.

One characteristic that the legal leaders were certainly not looking for was a lack of true gender balance on outside counsel teams.

Janet McCarthy, the chief legal officer of Santa Fe Group, said there's one thing that can knock outside counsel pitches down a few notches in her book—tokenism. She said firms have sent five white male partners in to pitch her and brought along one young recently hired woman who wasn't suitable for the case, just to appear diverse.

“I would rather have you say, 'I don't have the right woman for the job,'” McCarthy said.

When women and members of other marginalized groups are on a team McCarthy's hired, she said she checks the bill to make sure they're being credited and paid fairly for the work they've done.

McCarthy, who works in London, also noted the recently revealed gender pay gaps at a number of U.K. law firms, and said lack of action to close those gaps could harm these firms' chances of landing business going forward. The firms were required to disclose gender wage gaps between most employees, though not specifically partners, under U.K. law.

Some British firms released partner salary gaps in an effort to boost transparency and accountability, though McCarthy said that of the 10 firms with the largest gap, only two have published partners' gender pay differences.

“If in these studies, they're not choosing to publish their partner numbers, what that suggests to me is [they're] not actually interested in engaging in a genuine partnership with us,” said Jennifer Warner, the vice president of legal for Columbia Sportswear Co., who also spoke on the panel. “If you were interested in a genuine partnership, you'd share that information.”

In addition to discussing the need for increased transparency, panelists mentioned other ways the old model of doing business with law firms may no longer work.

According to Warner, companies are moving away from relying only on big firms.

She said that there are now a plethora of alternative legal service options and boutique law firms competing for business with brand name firms. She said with increased competition, Big Law can no longer rely on existing client relationships alone to guarantee future work.

“What I tend to see with traditional law firms is they're not yet thinking in market terms,” Warner said. “They're just thinking in relationship terms … For me, that's not what I need or what I'm looking for anymore.”

What Warner is looking for, she said, are innovative firms with competitive rates, that seek to form authentic relationships with clients and perform efficient, high-quality work. But even something as simple as firms checking in to get feedback on their work or input for changes sets them apart, she said.

“To win that market for me, you need to be bringing something pretty special to the table. It can't just be relationship at an hourly rate, and I want innovation,” Warner said.