Can Women Lawyers Ever Find Equality In Biglaw?

As long as the profits keep rolling in, why should Biglaw care about gender equality?

climbing stairs staircase to Biglaw partner partnership woman lawyerHey — who cares if Biglaw is white and male as long as it can charge $2,000 per hour (or more). It’s all about the money, after all. Isn’t it?

Of course.

As long as the profits keep rolling in, why should Biglaw care about gender equality? Yeah, I know – clients are starting to demand it; let’s see what happens. (The CEO of United Airlines probably had a similar lack of concern the other day about the passenger dragged off one of his planes, until the PR nightmare hit).

Escape From Alcatraz

I went “over the wall” and escaped from Biglaw; I know it as a grinding law factory that demands loyalty but is anything but loyal in return. “Collegiality” is probably the most overused, disingenuous word in the Biglaw recruiting lexicon, and I suspect that every Biglaw firm touts it as its number one quality – and many naïve (new) lawyers believe the pitch.

Yet likely no one who has ever plied the lawyer’s trade in Biglaw can say – if they are honest – that their firm is truly “collegial.” Fat fees and greed are the prevailing ethos – how can you afford to be “collegial” when “shareholder value” is the summum bonum?

The same is true about those more recent recruiting come-ons such as “family friendly” and “diversity and inclusion.” Such noble – but empty – words! Try counting the number of female partners or partners of color at Biglaw – see how diverse it really is. And how many lawyers with kids – male or female, but mostly female – who were smilingly promised “family friendly” hours were subtly hip-checked out the door for not billing enough after a respectable period of time had passed. I know a few.

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Nothing must get in the way of billing, the billable hour, the almost-sacred realization rate, or profits per partner.

Certainly not you, lady!

Gender Pay Disparity

A 2016 “fact sheet” published by the National Partnership For Women & Families stated that in New York, women are paid 87 cents for every dollar paid a man. And recall the equal pay complaint of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team?

So we know that women generally get paid less than men. What about in the law?

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A Major, Lindsey & Africa survey released in late 2016 found that women law partners average about 69% of the compensation of male partners. Above the Law also reported at the time on the NYC Bar Association’s 2015 Diversity Benchmarking Report, which stated that “[d]espite more than a decade of New York law firms pledging to enhance diversity in their ranks, minority representation within associate and partners levels stalled last year, and attrition rates for female and minority attorneys remained disproportionately high.”

As the Law Journal noted, “Overall, firms are struggling to meet key statements in the diversity principles they signed onto, and women and minority attorneys are leaving at high numbers. Among all attorneys, 18.4 percent of women and 20.8 percent of minorities left last year, compared with only 12.9 percent of white men.”

Women take note – “While only 44 percent of current associates are white men, they make up 75 percent of current partners. … about 44 percent of associates are women, compared to 20 percent of partners.”

So it’s no surprise that women have recently sued at least five Biglaw firms for alleged pay disparity under the Equal Pay Act (“EPA”).

Mansplaining and Manterrupting

And then there’s the harassment, and the “bro culture,” and the “mansplaining.”

Speaking of “manterrupting,” the New York Times defined it as “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man.” Every woman I know has had this happen to her.

And apropos of that, did you catch the article in the Washington Post this week reporting on a law review study finding that “Supreme Court justices are some of the most powerful individuals in the country, yet the female justices find themselves interrupted not only by their male colleagues, but also by their subordinates: the male advocates who are attempting to persuade them.… The situation only seems to be getting worse with more women on the court.”

So – do you think that gender pay disparity, harassment, and marginalization are mere incidentals, as opposed to an insidious inequality practiced society-wide – and ingrained in Biglaw as part of its longstanding model?

The “Iron Law” of Biglaw

Maybe it all adds up to the fact that the Biglaw model is, by its very history and nature, inherently unequal – unequal to all but the ruling few, who happen to be male and white. And for women – who were, after all, only allowed relatively recently into law schools, the ABA and Biglaw, it is even more unequal – and will continue to be.

First, consider the entrance requirements. The Ivy League law schools, being the Biglaw gatekeepers, select those who will “make it” in Biglaw, and train/brand/clone them to fit right in.

And they charge an indecent entrance fee to cull out the herd – enough to keep new lawyers indentured to Biglaw for many years – and long enough for Biglaw to make quite a profit until it sends (most of) them packing. It’s sort of like the relationship between college and professional sports, or the baseball minor leagues to MLB, or graduate instructors in college.

For its part, Biglaw must pay ever-higher salaries so that the associates can and will be enticed (or forced) to stay – and for which the associates are required to work on an assembly line that gets faster and faster each year (I once said “think Lucy Ricardo on the chocolate candy assembly line”). And for which client fees must be jacked up ever higher.

Takeaway

So – who gets the payoff? The big payday?

As always – follow the money. And the trail leads to a firmly entrenched cadre of power brokers.

And guess what gender and color they are?

Earlier: NYC Bar Report Reveals Minorities Have A 60% Higher Attrition Rate
It Doesn’t Get Better — Women Supreme Court Justices Get Interrupted Too
Gender Dynamics At SCOTUS? Female Justices Interrupted More Often Than Male Justices


richard-b-cohenRichard B. Cohen has litigated and arbitrated complex business and employment disputes for almost 40 years, and is a partner in the NYC office of the national “cloud” law firm FisherBroyles. He is the creator and author of his firm’s Employment Discrimination blog, and received an award from the American Bar Association for his blog posts. You can reach him at Richard.Cohen@fisherbroyles.com and follow him on Twitter at @richard09535496.