Law firms’ problem with women

“The last time I wrote about women and the law, it took weeks for the flames to die down. Only a glutton for punishment would return to this topic again. Ahem.

So I’ve been collecting articles about the seemingly endless issue of the apparently insurmountable barrier to the full participation of women in law firms. Another article on that score, this one from The New York Times earlier this week, galvanized me to pull them all together and talk about them. To wit:

• ‘A Bleak Picture’ for Women Trying to Rise at Law Firms (The New York Times, July 24, 2017): “Women are 50.3 percent of current law school graduates, yet they still make up just under 35 percent of lawyers at law firms, [according to the 2017 Law360 Glass Ceiling Report.] Most important, their share of equity partnerships — where the highest compensation and leadership positions are lodged — remains at 20 percent and has not changed in recent years, the report found.”
• Study Shows Gender Diversity Varies Widely Across Practice Areas(The American Lawyer, April 17, 2017): “The majority of AmLaw 200 practices have an average female head count ratio of 30 percent. Practice areas with the highest compensation and focus within Big Law, such as banking, intellectual property and litigation, had the lowest percentages of women. Women made up only 35 percent of Am Law 200 litigation departments, 31 percent of banking and taxation practices and accounted for 27 and 23 percent of IP and M&A teams, respectively, [according to a study by ALM Intelligence, Where Do We Go From Here? Big Law’s Struggle With Recruiting and Retaining Female Talent.]
• The Gender Pay Gap for Big Law Partners: 44 Percent (Bloomberg Business of Law, Oct. 12, 2016): ‘Of the 2,153 [BigLaw] partners polled [by Major, Lindsey & Africa], men earned an average of $949,000 per year while women brought in $659,000. The differences in partner billing rates ($701 for men and $636 for women) and hours billed (1,703 for men and 1,632 for women) remained relatively small. But the results show women still lag behind significantly in originations, pulling in an average of $1,730,000 versus $2,590,000 for men. … Lack of credit for origination is a common complaint leveled by women in BigLaw.’”