In 2015 a research team in the School of Law at the University of Canterbury developed a project with the Canterbury Women’s Legal Association to gather information about flexible and part-time work practices in the Canterbury Legal Profession. For the purposes of the project, part-time work is defined as a form of employment which carries fewer hours per week than a full-time job. A flexible work arrangement is defined as an arrangement where an employee benefits from working practices that offer different degrees of structure, regularity and flexibility. Such arrangements may include the ability to choose the start and finishing time of the working day or compressed work weeks.

In November 2015 the Canterbury and Westland Branch of the Law Society, on behalf of the project team, invited all qualified lawyers practicing in the Canterbury and Westland area to participate in a short online survey examining flexible and part-time working arrangements. An invitation was also sent to all legal executives working in the same area.

One hundred and thirty eight responses were received and over 90% of these were from female lawyers and legal executives. Although lower participation rate by males is reported in other studies focusing on the legal profession, the gender split in the responses in this project was far more pronounced, suggesting a lack of interest by local male lawyers in this issue.

Survey participants were either practising lawyers or legal executives, with legal executives making up 21% of the survey cohort. Fifteen percent of the cohort identified as employers. Ninety six percent of the employee cohort was working on a permanent contract of employment. Just under 50% of the employee cohort were working under a flexible or part-time arrangement.