When I first met Laura (not her real name), she was an associate solicitor in a small but busy general practice and excited to be pregnant with her first child. Five years later, she was a solicitor at a top Dublin law firm and a parent to two young children with a third on the way. Her husband, who was building his own career in finance, was a hands-on dad who took the kids to creche every morning and helped with meals. They were managing the work-family juggle with help from their elderly parents and the occasional childminder.
A year later, Laura quit work altogether. The 60-plus-hour workweeks were unworkable, and minding small children was taking a toll on the grandparents. She’d asked the firm about going part-time or working from home twice a week. The answer back then was a hard “no”. It’s not that she didn’t want to work – she liked the intellectual challenge and the financial security – but the legal industry’s lack of flexibility at that time made it impossible to continue. A lack of affordable childcare was also an issue.
John (not his real name) is in his 50s, and he’s “been there, done that” in his Cork accountancy firm. He loves working but wants more flexibility to travel during the summer with his partner and young teenagers, train for marathons abroad, and to help look after his ailing mother during the week. Despite many conversations with his employer, and a formal request under the Code on the Right to Request Flexible Working and Remote Working, he wasn’t able to negotiate a term-time role or regular work from home. The structure would not bend even though he was one of the firm’s best performers. So, he left and now works for himself.
Increasingly, highly paid, highly skilled professionals are leaving rigidly structured jobs for situations that offer more flexible work options to suit their lives and responsibilities.
Although people like Laura and John have adapted to a changed world, their professions are failing to keep pace with demographic shifts and changing attitudes to work.
A recent survey from employment platforms EmployFlex and EmployMum found 99 per cent of workers would stay longer in a job that offers flexible working, and 78 per cent would accept a lower salary to get it. Yet 87 per cent say flexible roles remain difficult to find.
Shifting sands
Women are represented in the professions more than ever before, and more high-earning men want time with their families, but some firms’ work structures are not keeping pace with these changes. In 2014, Ireland became the first jurisdiction in the world where female solicitors outnumbered men. Today, women comprise 54 per cent of all practising solicitors in the country and two-thirds of those working in-house, according to the Law Society of Ireland.
“There’s a legal talent drain in Ireland. We lose one-third of women in their child-rearing years and they’re not coming back into the workforce,” says Ciara Battigan, managing director of Heron, a flexible work platform for the legal profession.
“We have all this wasted talent. Female solicitors want to work but traditional models don’t lend themselves to the way they need to work.”
On average, women in Ireland take six years out of the workforce. It’s a costly choice as that gap does not simply pause a career; it reshapes it permanently. That’s six years of client relationships built by someone else, six years off the partnership track and six years of missed pension contributions.
Accountancy is another profession that’s attracting more women (43.4 per cent in 2025) while struggling to support both males and females in their caring responsibilities. According to Chartered Accountants Ireland, a significant barrier for its 40,000 members is the cost and availability of childcare, which often forces a binary choice between full-time work or career breaks instead of flexible part-time options.
Unfortunately, sectors and companies clinging to a “long hours in the office” culture – legal, accountancy, technology, engineering and financial – are losing people like Laura and John and then complaining about talent shortages. To these firms, work is a rigid proposition: work full-time or leave.
Many jobs cannot be worked flexibly, or are too messy to make part-time, but companies still lack imagination when it comes to redesigning work for the modern age.
“Employers are spending thousands trying to fill roles while sitting on the simplest solution,” says Karen O’Reilly, founder of EmployFlex, a flexible and remote work agency. “Workers aren’t asking for perks, they’re asking for practicality. And they’re willing to be paid less for it. How many other retention tools come with a built-in cost saving?”
About 21 per cent of the total workforce (about 593,400 people) worked part-time in 2025. Ireland has one of the highest disparities in the EU between the share of women (23 per cent) and men (7 per cent) in part-time employment, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
[ Employers running out of time as changes on pay transparency and retirement loom ]
Part-time work is often only available in lower-paid sectors like accommodation, food services, retail, health and social work. Yet more than 62 per cent of women in employment hold a third-level degree, compared with 51 per cent of men.
So, what’s a highly skilled, highly paid professional to do when they can’t find flexible work that aligns with their education and training, pays well and allows them to meet their caring responsibilities?
Platform power
Several job matching platforms and support agencies have stepped into the breach – Agile Connect and Career Returners, in addition to Heron, EmployFlex and EmployMum – by cleverly targeting professionals who want to work part-time without sacrificing their professional rates.
Heron is the newest platform, and it connects experienced, vetted solicitors seeking flexible, part-time or project-based work with law firms, in-house legal teams and businesses that need qualified legal expertise outside of full-time employment. The flexibility does not require a discount on the work.
Heron has found many of its users are experienced senior legal professionals – both men and women – who want flexibility around when, where and who they work with. It’s about freedom and a better lifestyle: some live in France, Dubai or in rural areas or cities outside Dublin.
It works both ways, too.
“Many small firms are struggling to access talent and this allows them to grow by tapping into expertise and only pay for what they need,” says Battigan. “Billing rates reflect the solicitor’s experience and expertise and they negotiate directly with their clients.”
The Agile Connect platform features C-suite and senior-level executives with backgrounds in finance, commercial, sales, marketing and technology, says Fiona Doyle, now fractional chief commercial officer at Agile, after working at Big Four accounting firm PwC for almost 20 years.
Many Agile executives have come from big corporate roles or set up businesses themselves, and now “they may be looking at their next chapter, or a new way of working, more flexibility but in roles that can play to their skills and industry expertise and where they can make an impact quickly”.
Widening access to part-time work and developing a flexible labour market have positive economic and social benefits for both employers and employees. It’s time employers got with the programme.
This article was originally published in The Irish Times on 30th April 2026 and can be accessed here.