Where Will You Be In 100 Years? (When We Have Gender Parity In The Legal Profession)

Almost no one now on the planet, let alone in the legal profession, will be alive a century or so from now to welcome the arrival of gender parity.

sad woman lawyerUh-oh. I was catching up on my ATL reading, when I was completely gob-smacked (thank you, Lord Grantham [and if you don’t understand the reference, you didn’t watch Downton Abbey]) to read that one researcher thinks that it will take more than 100 (not a typo) years for the profession to reach gender parity. Did I read that right?

I’m not going to discuss the conversation that Renwei Chung had with Paola Cecchi-Demeglio. You can read that yourself.

However, if the researcher’s prediction is correct, almost no one now on the planet, let alone in the legal profession, will be alive a century or so from now to welcome the arrival of gender parity. I can handle delayed gratification, but only up to a point, and that arrival is something that I can’t handle, nor should anyone else in our profession. Anyone for cryogenics?

There may be at least a generation or two hence that will be around to celebrate. (Do we need to dust off the Rule Against Perpetuities here? Will lives in being plus 21 years suffice?)

We dinosaurs will have been taking dirt naps for several generations. Even millennials will be pushing up daisies, or whatever your variation thereof.

A woman lawyer friend of mine, who has lasted almost forty (again, not a typo) as a partner in Biglaw, surviving mergers and acquisitions, is, as I am, very disheartened by the state of women in the profession, and I haven’t even shared with her Renwei’s post.

What disheartens us? Where do we start?

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How about gender bias that starts in the law school admission process?  

What this summary concludes is that the pipeline for women lawyers leaks and gives several reasons for that leakage, including the following:

1. While women receive the majority of college degrees, women applying to law school represent just barely over fifty percent of the applicant pool.

2. Women who do apply to law school are less likely to be admitted than men.

3. The law schools that do accept women have significantly lower placement rates; in other words, women attend lower tier schools and thus, don’t snag the full-time long-term positions that are the gold standards for law school boasting.

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When trouble arose aboard Apollo 13 in 1970 while on its way to the moon, Astronaut Jack Swigert told Mission Control, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” 

We have had and we still do. It’s a problem across the profession. In fact, the summary noted that this leak is not limited to particular regions of the country. It’s everywhere and it’s gotten worse since 2000. The problem with leaks, as everyone who’s ever had a leaky pipe know, is that they only get worse. (Watergate arose out of trying to plug the leaking of classified information, and we dinosaurs all remember how that turned out.)

This leakage is different, but just as bad. How many women considering applying to law school will read the report and Renwei’s post and decide to take a pass on law school? How many women in law school will think “whoops, I made a wrong turn at Black’s Law Dictionary?” How many women having passed the bar will think “what was the point of all this, of taking on the debt, if I can’t find a job?” How many women who want to switch firms, switch practice areas, or choose another career within the profession (in-house, government, or whatever) will be discouraged, disheartened, dissuaded, whatever “dis” you choose, from making a move?

Far too many, I think, given that gender parity is predicted to be at least a century away. (A good thing about death is that it extinguishes those pesky evergreen student loans, if you haven’t been in a job that is eligible for loan forgiveness, but what a way to get out from under.)

Piling it on, the National Association for Law Placement reports very small gains in the number of women and minority lawyers in firms, but those gains mean nothing compared to the “incredibly slow pace of change.” No surprise there. For those who don’t have enough work to fill the billable hours requirement and need to look busy, here’s the report: 

We all know how hard it is for anyone, female or male, to find full time long term jobs in the profession these days. However, it’s about opportunities that women don’t have once they’ve been practicing for a while, and please, don’t tell me that women leave practice because they want to do other things, e.g. having and raising children, caring for aging parents, making other career choices. Yes, some women do leave for those reasons, but many others don’t, and leave for reasons when they feel their careers, their progress, their ability to scale the peaks stymied.

Refusal to share origination credit and/or the work when the woman brings in the business, but the male lawyer snarfs it up? Refusal to let women take the lead on cases? Refusal to pay the women who bill more hours than male attorneys but are paid less? Any of those sound familiar?

About forty years ago, I was at a State Bar of California committee meeting where one of the then State Bar poo-bahs (not staff) opined that women did not make good trial lawyers. Of course, he (now you know) was a good (probably great in his mind) trial lawyer, but in his eyes women couldn’t be. He thought that women belonged in the “pink collar” areas of practice, e.g. family law, probate and trust work. He should have told that to my then boss, a district attorney, who thought that women made great trial lawyers, hired a bunch of us to prove his point, and we did.

This narrow-minded thinking is still rampant. It shouldn’t take at least another hundred years for gender parity; it shouldn’t take any more time at all, but it will. What’s another hundred years or more? In the history of the universe, it’s a mere second or two, if that, but for women lawyers, it’s an eternity.


old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.