Women Law Students Are Pissed About The Biglaw Pay Disparity

Law students get it.

onOctober 19, 2016 at 3:16 PM

Overworked and stressed! This is what we know about partner compensation at Biglaw firms: overall, women partners are paid 44% less than their male counterparts. There is a trend of women Biglaw partners suing their firms over gender discrimination, including lower pay allegations. If these facts aren’t enough to make you think something is wrong, well, you probably aren’t looking closely enough.

Law students understand something is foul in Biglaw. Karen Sloan at Law.com spoke with law students at elite law schools, and they are disappointed in these stats.

“It’s unacceptable,” said Casey T.S. Jonas, a third-year student at the University of Virginia and president of the Virginia Law Women. “It’s yet another example of what the experience of a woman at a big law firm might be—that no matter how hard you work or how high you rise, you’re still going to see this pay gap, which is only one symptom of a greater issue.”

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The systemic nature of the issue is glaring, and discourages women from sticking around Biglaw to reach those highest levels.

Rose Kenerson and Caitlin Lackner, co-presidents of the Penn Law Women’s Association, see partnership promotions and the gender pay gap as interconnected problems. Some women leave law firms in part because they recognize that they won’t earn as much as their male colleague, they said.

“We think this could be a contributing factor in Big Law law firms having fewer women at the top of the pyramid, despite women making up half the population of most top law schools,” Kenerson said.

But despite the awareness of the issue, it may not stop people from traveling down the Biglaw path. The allure of MoneyLaw just may be too strong.

“I would doubt that people interested in going the Big Law route would be turned off on this,” Jonas said. “But I do wonder if there will be those who see that maybe there isn’t quite the payoff they were hoping for.”

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