4 minute read
Professional greetings for the twenty-first century
Professional greetings for the twenty-first century
As Nicola Paffard discusses below the ‘Dear Sirs’ greeting beloved of lawyers is a formality that now feels extremely dated in a number of ways. We would love to hear readers' views on how they tackle this. How about considering the ‘Dear colleague’ approach this has an added benefit of reminding both parties' lawyers that they are part of the same profession with all the ethical regulation that involves. It’s always difficult tackling traditions held over many years but its definitely possible; referring to Lady Chief Justice now feels incredibly normal after a ‘mere’ 800 years of referring to Lord Chief Justice. Surely, we can find a way to refreshen our forms of greeting.
Nicola Paffard offers her solution on the opposite page and explains below how she and why she developed that chart.
It has been common practice to use ‘Dear Sirs’ as a generic greeting when a law firm writes to another since the legal profession began. At that time, members of the profession were (almost) exclusively male. Even in the mid-20th century, females in the legal profession were predominantly support staff, secretaries, occasionally junior lawyers – rarely partners or business owners.
But that has not been the case for decades. In the UK, female entrants to the profession have outnumbered male entrants since the early 1990s, and whilst there’s still a notably long way to go before achieving gender parity in the leadership space, female partners and owners of legal firms should no longer be ignored! In my own firm, women make up around three quarters of the workforce – so why are we still being addressed as ‘Dear Sirs’? Not to mention our aspirations to be inclusive to all genders, and to live and demonstrate our values through everything we do –to be the difference.
As the Gender Equity lead at Cripps, I discussed this with my team who are making small but mighty changes within the firm to make us more inclusive. Initiatives like introducing gender inclusive toilet signage, ensuring all our legal drafting is gender neutral, raising awareness of unconscious bias and gender diversity through events and sharing experiences. Adopting a gender inclusive greeting in correspondence seemed like an important part of our authenticity and commitment to the cause. Phrases like ‘Dear Sirs’, whilst seemingly innocuous, are outdated and do not reflect our own workplace or those of the organisations we are addressing.
But what to say instead? We did some research on possible other options, but there seemed to be so many different variations required. Our lawyers use letters and emails to connect in so many situations – with a law firm who represents an opponent in a dispute, or with a firm representing someone we want to be on good terms with; sometimes we know the name of the person we are contacting, sometimes we don’t; sometimes we know their gender, sometimes we don’t. We need to be professional; we want to be respectful and inclusive and whatever we do we want it to be easy to implement. Persuading people away from using ‘Dear Sirs’ is literally asking them to break the habit of a lifetime.
I wanted to empower our busy legal professionals to make a quick choice to use inclusive language. I felt sure I would find a helpful decision tree or visual guide online but searched in vain. Finally, I decided to create my own. I was really pleased with the result – it made sense to me and I think it produces a professional but inclusive phrase depending on the circumstances. Still not sure I had covered all the nuances, I shared my draft on LinkedIn. I received a fantastic response from my network. I don’t think many legal professionals had seen anything like it before. I was happy to share the idea and support others to be inclusive without struggling like we had. Perhaps it will become a new convention! ■
Nicola Paffard
Head of Legal Process Improvement (Partner) cripps.co.uk
