More Evidence of Sexism in the Legal Community

Whenever we do a post on gender inequality in the legal profession, some readers insist on finding arguments to make the income gap “acceptable.”

Another survey was released yesterday, this time from the National Association of Women Lawyers, that shows pay and promotion inequality is still the norm.

The WSJ Law Blog puts the facts plainly:

There is also a considerable pay gap. At 99% of the firms, the top-paid partner is a man; on average, male equity partners earn more than $87,000 annually than female equity partners. (Fifty-nine firms in the AmLaw 200 reported compensation data.)

Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if the other 141 AmLaw 200 firms had bothered to report their compensation data?

The survey itself deals straight-away with one of more common justifications for continued inequality:

In spite of more than two decades in which women have graduated from law schools and started careers in private practice at about the same rate as men, women continue to be markedly underrepresented in the leadership ranks of firms. Women lawyers account for fewer than 16% of equity partners, those lawyers who hold an ownership interest in their firms and occupy the most prestigious, powerful and best‐paid positions. The average firm’s highest governing committee counts women as only 15% of its members – and 15% of the nation’s largest firms have no women at all on their governing committees. Only about 6% of law firm managing partners are women.

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Let me access my inner Joe Biden and repeat that: two decades, starting careers in at the same rate as men, 16% of equity partners.

More survey results after the jump.


The Law Blog also reports:

Lisa Horowitz, the president of the Association, chalks up the pay differential in part to the fact that women, come compensation time, are less prone to brag about their contributions. “Research has found that women don’t self promote” as much as men, she says. Another factor: many firms, she says, don’t adequately value women’s contributions beyond mere business generation, such as mentoring associates or participating in firm management.

Horowitz does not go into how “self-promoting” women are treated within their firms by their colleagues and superiors.

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We might be years away from fixing outdated assumptions about gender roles and behavior. But surely we can fix this:

At every stage of practice, men out‐earn women lawyers, a finding that is consistent with NAWL’S previous Surveys and data from other sources. At the level of equity partner, the income difference is greatest.

Or this:

Thus, in the average firm, the percentage of women of color at the equity level is a small fraction ‐‐ 1/8 ‐‐ of the number of associates who are women of color. Clearly the combination of being female and a lawyer of color presents additional challenges within law firms.

There are women in the pipeline, and they’ve been there for over 20 years. But somehow, when it comes it comes time to get paid or promoted, women are blocked.

… And this study was done before the economy turned into a Hank Paulson thought experiment. Watch now as the economic crisis is used as another “benign justification” for continued sexism in the profession.

NAWL Survey.pdf

Women in BigLaw: Pounding Against the Glass Ceiling? [Law Blog]

Status Quo for Women Lawyers, Says Latest NAWL Report [AmLaw Daily]

Earlier: Minority Women = Snowball In Hell