Innovating for Equality: Catalyzing Opportunity for Women in Law through Digital Transformation & AI

Women worldwide face inequality and barriers in law, whether at work where they are excluded from top leadership roles, encounter bias, unequal pay, navigate inflexible working environments and more or in accessing law and justice to fulfill their legal needs. AI transformation threatens to amplify inequality and barriers and is already bringing new harms. It is also catalyzing tectonic shifts in the legal sector, presenting historic opportunity to combat inequality, inequity, exclusion, and bias inherent in the legal and justice systems and workplaces of today as new systems, types of organizations, solutions, and products are built.  Urgent action to support women in law is needed as AI supercharges this opportunity and global frameworks are reimagined, new public and private sector institutions are built, and market forces stimulate intense activity and shift paradigms. 

Around the world, women are seizing opportunities, turning to entrepreneurship or pioneering innovation and digital transformation in their institutions and even their countries. Notably this group includes numerous women lawyers who have left roles in traditional legal institutions to pursue the many benefits offered by new organizations and roles, including to escape barriers they face in reaching leadership roles and their full potential in traditional legal institutions. 

Fully harnessing the opportunity requires robust, timely efforts to empower and support more women to lead the new AI era of law, engage in law-related entrepreneurship, and forge future facing careers. Vigorous, rapid action is needed to ensure diversity and equal representation among new artificial intelligence bodies especially those implicating law, e.g., governance, apply a gender lens to investments and procurement in the sector, expand access to finance, and deploy aggressive efforts to capacitate, empower, and support women in these fields.

Strong women’s leadership is also pivotal to maximizing the opportunity of Al to build “new” legal and justice systems, institutions, and solutions designed to incorporate the needs and values of women. Challenges women face in addressing legal needs and accessing justice are well-documented in some countries, but efforts to understand and incorporate women’s perspectives, values, and preferences for outcomes and solutions are more nascent. Women’s perspectives on what constitutes “good legal solutions and outcomes” can diverge from those offered by the male designed and dominated systems of today. Women-led efforts to broaden and deepen this understanding and incorporate the results in the design of new systems, institutions, solutions, and products is essential to shifting paradigms to respond to the needs of the 4 billion women worldwide.

Women pioneering digital transformation, legal and justice innovation, artificial intelligence and other technology in the legal and justice sectors (the Field) face numerous challenges and barriers.² These exist across a broad spectrum of areas and are often interrelated and intersectional. Professional challenges and barriers include lack of 1) support for women transitioning to the Field; 2) mentorship and community support; 3) awareness of the Field and career pathways; 4) role models; 5) bias, discrimination, and harassment; 6) gaps in education and training; and 7) inadequate support for women entrepreneurs, especially access to finance; 8) access to human capital; and 9) limited visibility and influence. Personal challenges and barriers include lack of care and societal norms.

Our report examines the careers and professional experiences of 105 women leaders in “future of law” roles from 31 countries³ with the objective of understanding the potential of digital and AI transformation in law to empower and elevate women in law,  support them in workplaces, catalyze their access to economic opportunities in artificial intelligence, other emerging technology, and legal entrepreneurship and expand women’s access to law and justice more generally. It concludes with a Blueprint and call to action to power women to work at the forefront of transformation in law.

Report findings include:

Contact Us to Request the Full Report.