We know there is a gender gap in Biglaw partnerships. But according to a new survey from the National Association of Women Lawyers, there is also a business generation gap between female and male partners. The Legal Intelligencer reports:

Whether this new statistic, measured in the latest survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers, can be seen as the fault of the firm or the fault of women lawyers themselves is a question the survey didn’t answer….

According to the survey results 46 percent of large law firms have no women at all among their top 10 rainmakers. Almost another third, or 32 percent, have only one woman on that list. About 15 percent of large firms have two women among their top rainmakers and 6 percent have three or four in the top 10. About 72 percent of large firms have no women at all among the top five rainmakers in the firm, the survey results showed.

“The results are astounding, even to those of us familiar with the dynamics of legal business development,” NAWL said in its report on the survey.

The raw data doesn’t provide a concrete reason for this gap. But there are a lot of theories.

Here at Above the Law, we’ve reviewed a lot of employment discrimination complaints over the years. But this one is special.

The firm (like it matters):

Maron Marvel Bradley & Anderson.

The plaintiff:

Jennifer Braude.

Why you care:

Do I have your attention? Click after the jump for more details, plus Maron Marvel’s response.

Working Mother magazine has released its annual review of law firms and named the 50 Best Law Firms for Women. No shame on these firms (unlike the one in our caption contest), at least when it comes to “flex-time, reduced-hour and other family-friendly policies”:

[O]ur winning firms have more lawyers working reduced hours (8 percent versus 5 percent nationwide) and also employ more female equity partners, who share in their firm’s profits (20 percent versus 16 percent nationwide)—and that’s just for starters. We salute these firms for recognizing that making the legal profession work for women is good business for everyone.

As pointed out by the ABA Journal:

A bad economy may be hurting law firms, but it’s opening up more flex-time opportunities for male as well as female lawyers.

Only one firm from the top five most prestigious — as ranked by Vault last year — made the cut.

We sometimes like to think of the figures we write about in these pages as characters in a novel. Viewed in this way, Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting NYU law professor who apparently isn’t a fan of gay rights, is one of the most compelling we’ve come across recently.

We have a weakness for strong, outspoken Asian women — hi Mom! — and this description fits Dr. Thio to a T. Our only disappointment: Dr. Thio was whiny when attacked. (We agree with Professor Brian Leiter — playing the victim card was weak, Dr. Thio.)

Now, meet an even more compelling character — one who wouldn’t have responded to a random IT guy by playing victim, but by treating him like Obama treated that fly. She’s the original Dr. Thio: Li-ann Thio’s mother, Dr. Su Mien Thio (pictured), who taught Thio the Younger everything she knows (e.g., that gay sex is evil).

From a tipster:

It looks like Dr. Thio’s mother — a former judge who inspired Li-ann Thio’s own rise in politics — was involved in some serious anti-gay drama this year, after battling what she saw as a conspiracy to generate a “generation of lesbians.”

It all started with unrest over a screening of Spider Lilies, a lusty Taiwanese movie about an Internet cam girl [Ed. note: A cam girl? Like SexyLexus?] falling in love with another girl. The elder Dr. Thio, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, ended up locked out of a building after a failed takeover of a feminist organization.

And the trailer for the movie is totally hot!

Update: Not surprisingly, given her staunch opposition to homosexuality, Dr. Thio Su Mien is also against abortion. A headline from Roll on Friday: “Leading Singaporean lawyer blames abortion for SARS.”

More about the Spider Lilies controversy and Dr. Su Mien Thio’s impressive résumé, after the jump.

Many of the events we attended at last week’s NALP conference were on the depressing side. After a decade, or perhaps two decades, of growth, the legal profession is experiencing a painful contraction.

But perhaps the current carnage, and the challenge it poses to the existing law firm business model, could give way to reform. As James Jones of Hildebrandt explained, the economic crisis could lead to positive changes in terms of the cost-effective delivery of legal services. “A financial crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” he quipped.

Jones is not alone in this assessment. We attended a panel discussion entitled The 21st Century Lawyer: New Models for Practicing Law, in which three pioneers of the profession — Audrey Bracey Deegan, of Deloitte Consulting LLP; Deborah Epstein Henry, of Flex-Time Lawyers LLC; and Mehul Patel, of Axiom — discussed the alternative models of practice represented by their organizations. These models could become more compelling as the Great Recession forces firms to rethink how they do business.

An account of the panel, which was ably moderated by Professor Carole Silver of Georgetown, after the jump.

Times are tough for we media folk these days. Newspapers across the country are declaring bankruptcy, magazines are dying, and Atlantic Magazine has even predicted the end of the New York Times.

Given the challenging environment for journalism, we thought you might be worried about the fates of Sue: For Women in Litigation and KNOW: A Magazine for Paralegals. We know you have a special interest in Sue since one of you ATL readers was responsible for naming the magazine.

Though the magazine’s publisher, Chere Estrin of EstrinLegalEd, filed for Chapter 11 in December (Bankruptcy Petition # 2:08-bk-32520-BR), the magazines struggle on. We surfed over to their websites and discovered that KNOW is down to 6 issues per year, and that Sue just released its inaugural issue, albeit a digital version only. According to the website:

Sue is a 100-percent digital publication. It looks just like a hard-copy magazine except that you will view it on your PC. You can even ‘turn’ the pages. The inaugural edition is Feb./Mar. 2009.

Well, that sounds snazzy. We didn’t get a chance to peruse the digital mag, but it must be good given its endorsements. The homepage proclaims:

Sue Magazine has been recognized in AmLaw Online; The National Law Journal; The ABA Journal; Above The Law and other prestigious publications.

We’ve been called many things, but prestigious is a new one.

Earlier: Move over Marie Claire and Elle, Sue’s coming to town
We Don’t KNOW How This Magazine for Paralegals Will Do

A new book details the challenges that women face as they try to climb the corporate ladder. Author Kathy Caprino argues that in many instances women’s contributions are hard to compare against “hours” and “profits.”

Careful not to blame their male counterparts, Caprino says many female professionals are dominated at work by generally white-male competitive career models that emphasize linear career paths and the assumption that top-performing women are motivated most by money and power.

Nicole Nehama Auerbach, of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law Firms, takes Caprino’s analysis a step further and argues that women have been socialized in ways that aren’t always compatible with Biglaw success:

Women often bring intangibles to the firm such as nurturing business and a knack for making client teams work, Auerbach says. And these are qualities are difficult to quantify compared to billing hours in a profit-driven world.

“I think a lot of the issues she seizes upon would never be issues men would point to as a reason for not succeeding,” Auerbach says. “Traditionally, women are not as vocal about getting what they want; women were previously conditioned not to complain. That’s very different from the way a lot of men were raised.”

Is this type of analysis really all that helpful? More after the jump.

Back in August, we reported that a magazine for female litigators was in the works. They were in the naming phase at the time, and we tried to help them out by surveying you about the worst of their proposed names, including such gems as “Chill,” “Woman Litigator,” and “Spirit, The Magazine for Women in e-Discovery.” Almost half of the voters chose “Trial Mama” as the worst of the worst.

Well, in that post, we asked you all to suggest better titles. And it seems the magazine mavens were listening. They have embraced the suggestion proffered by commentator #33 on that thread, and named the magazine “Sue, For Women In Litigation.”

Kudos to us for calling them out on terrible title ideas and kudos to you, anonymous ATL reader, for naming a new magazine. It launches January 2009, and will be published bimonthly. The magazine promises “stories of remarkable individuals along with expert advice, cutting-edge data and emerging trends to help readers gain more recognition, more equity and opportunity in the legal workplace.”

The mission of “Sue” after the jump.

A few female readers have asked us to direct your attention to this poll at fashion and lifestyle blog Corporette:

How short of a skirt can a professional woman get away with?

According to the votes in so far, “professional women” can get away with skirts that stop just above the knee. Does the same apply to the legal profession? We’ll let you debate in the comments.

Meanwhile, we know that some of you would like every post under the sun to tie into the volcanic meltdown that is Wall Street. According to the “economic skirt theory,” women these days should be in skirts that brush the ground. Per a July article from the New York Times:

Although designers always dismiss the correlation between skirt lengths and financial markets as a fashion historian’s fantasy, the parallels are striking. Hemlines rose to dizzying heights in the financial and social whirl of the roaring 1920s — revealing women’s legs for one of the first times in recorded history. Then came the bear market and bare was out — except for low backs on the floor-length gowns that dropped hemlines just before the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Given the way things are going, maybe they’ll start designing woman’s skirt suits with trains?

Poll: How short is too short for a skirt? [Corporette]
Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline [New York Times]

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that women in legal occupations earn 51% of what men earn.

That is not a typo.

Some people will no doubt say something like “women are secretaries and men are attorneys,” before clubbing their mates into submission. But according to the report:

[T]he salary gap was the largest among judges, magistrates and other judicial workers, with women earning an estimated $69,500, compared to men’s $108,100, or about 64 percent of their salaries.

Women attorneys earned a median of $93,600, or about 78 percent of men’s median earnings of $120,400.

We briefly mentioned yesterday that female paralegals only earn 93% of what their male counterparts make. Given the proportion of females to males that work as paralegals, that income disparity screams of day-to-day sexism.

These additional numbers may speak to larger systematic problems facing women in the legal profession. Lockstep pay should smooth out gender inequality when it comes to salaries, so long as women are getting promoted and making partner on par with their male counterparts. Clearly, this is not happening.

And the “women get pregnant and have babies while men toil away all the live long day” argument is a poor one. Women who have left the profession to start a family are not artificially dragging down the salary numbers, since they are “out” of the profession. And surely we don’t think that women who take a “survival of the species” time-out and then come back to work should be penalized.

78 cents on the dollar for female attorneys? 51 cents on the dollar for all females in the profession? Those numbers are embarrassing. That is all.

Women in Legal Occupations Earned 51 Percent of Men’s Salaries, Says Study [Law.com]

My friend Anna is a summer wife.

You see, her “summer” husband, Abraham, does what all high-powered law firm partners do each summer: he dispatches his wife to the summer home in the Hamptons or Shelter Island or Martha’s Vineyard.

This allows Biglaw partners to supper in the city with the single senior (or summer) associates. I mean, these guys can’t be alone at dinnertime. They have to supper with someone, so why not with an associate who is close by or, better yet, in the same office?

One night, after I meet Abraham, I ask him about his family in exile, and how he is adjusting to their absence from his day- to-day life. He says: “Well, it’s better for the kids to be out there in the summer…. They have the beach, their grandparents are there….”

Blah. Blah. Blah. We’re in the midst of a global warming crisis; we’re all supposed to be wearing SPF 45, even when just driving in our cars. Do the kids really need that much sun and sea? And is it really benefiting them if their father is absent from their lives most days of the week? Or is this arrangement really better for you, Abraham?

Read more, after the jump.

According to the New York Times, John McCain has tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Appeal to disaffected Clinton voters? Trying to lock up the Mike Gravel fan base?

Update: Although Governor Palin is not a lawyer, there have already been several legal issues mentioned with regard to her candidacy. Just last month, her own state legislature opened an investigation into allegations that she tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from his state trooper job

Law professor Ann Althouse has already gone on record with a furry opinion about Palin’s credentials.

Without a professional legal background to pontificate on (compare Joe Biden), we here at ATL will continue to scour our sources to bring you the latest on Palin’s positions about the things that matter to lawyers, big and small. Anyone know her views on SCOTUS nominations?

McCain Chooses Palin as Running Mate [New York Times]
Alaska’s Palin Faces Probe [Wall Street Journal]

The makers of KNOW: The Magazine for Paralegals have another legal publication in the works. A tipster forwarded us an e-mail about a “new magazine for women professionals in litigation.”

Imagining the love child of Glamour and the American Lawyer, we expected to see planned articles on hot courtroom studs and legal fashion faux pas. But it sounds like this publication will be more strait-laced. The email announcement claims the magazine will “be chock full of work style and life style balance articles; address women’s issues in the law firm and in-house legal environment and offer informative pieces on current topics in technology, litigation and e-discovery.”

They’re in the naming phase, and are considering the following. Which two are not like the others?

* Women in Litigation
* Chill
* Woman Litigator
* Trial Mama
* American Litigator
* Spirit, The Magazine for Women in e-Discovery
* Equality, The Magazine for Women Litigators
* Legal Women, A Workstyle & Life Balance Magazine

We’re not excited by the bland “Women in Litigation” options, or anything with “e-Discovery” in the title. But “Chill” and “Trial Mama” are truly ridonculous. ATL Idol Exley’s “Clitigator”, or Lat’s beloved “Litigatrix”, would blow all the other entries away. We welcome better title suggestions in the comments.

Among the options offered, we can’t decide which is the worst. What do you think?

This week, Working Mother magazine, in association with Flex-Time Lawyers, released its second annual Best Law Firms for Women rankings.

Some of the firms on this year’s list are notorious sweatshops, more likely to help women freeze their eggs than they are to aid either sex in raising a family.

I contacted Deborah Epstein Henry (pictured), founder and president of Flex-Time Lawyers and co-author of the list. Henry said that her results reflect more than firm PR. The rankings score firm programs based on how many attorneys actually use those programs.

In Henry’s view, ranking the best law firms for women is more than just a women’s issue.

“What we are looking for is firms that have work/life policies that are both gender- and racial [sic] reason-neutral,” Henry said. “I firmly believe that the more we can move work/life issues away from being a ‘mommy’s issue’ the better off we’ll be.”

More on Henry’s efforts to make law firms responsive to lifestyle concerns after the jump.

The global megafirm that is Skadden is known for its “work hard, play hard” culture. We were hoping to get the chance to observe it firsthand, after one of the Skadden Insider bloggers toyed with the idea of inviting us to the firm’s 60th anniversary celebration on Ellis Island last month. Alas, it didn’t happen.

Skadden’s “macho” firm culture has been raised in a lawsuit that was covered in the press last week. From an article by Anthony Lin in the New York Law Journal:

Rita W. Gordon, a former counsel in the firm’s litigation department, was fired in 2005 for allegedly inappropriately charging clients for personal car service use. The firm reported her to the Departmental Disciplinary Committee and reimbursed several clients.

But Gordon claims her car service use was no different from that of other lawyers at the firm and that Skadden’s real aim “was to find a non-discriminatory excuse for terminating a 60-year-old woman and replace her with a younger man whose demeanor and conduct was more consistent with the ‘macho’ image of Skadden’s Litigation Department.”

Gordon filed suit against the firm and senior litigation partner Samuel Kadet in August 2006.

One former Skaddenite is surprised about Kadet being named as a defendant:

[O]f all the partners in the Skadden Litigation department, Sam Kadet is widely recognized as being one of the most polite and genuinely caring individuals there. While it’s not shocking that any Big Law firm might be on the receiving end of these allegations, it struck me as bizarre that Sam Kadet was personally named, given his exceedingly positive reputation.

Here’s another aspect of Rita Gordon’s case that some might find a little odd. From the NYLJ article:

According to her suit, Gordon was summoned to Kadet’s office in May 2005 and summarily fired for unauthorized car service charges totalling $50,000. Gordon claims the figure was reduced to $23,000 over a five-year period when the firm reported her to disciplinary authorities two weeks later.

Fifty grand in car service charges? Talk about a carbon footprint. Translated into Unlimited Ride MetroCards, that would have purchased Gordon about fifty years’ worth of subway usage.

But, global warming be damned, Gordon wasn’t a much of a straphanger:

Skadden lawyers are permitted to take cars home when they work past a certain hour at night, as well as at other times when client service demands. But Gordon is arguing she was justified in taking cars to and from her apartment at times other than late at night because she worked on client matters at home. She claims a 1994 back injury made it painful for her to sit at her desk for long hours or to work on papers back and forth on the subway.

Sitting at a desk for long hours? Isn’t that the definition of being an attorney?

(In all seriousness, if Gordon did have the need for some sort of accommodation, she probably should have cleared it with firm management in advance, with appropriate documentation placed in her personnel file. Just our two cents.)

Car Service at Issue in Age, Sex Discrimination Claim Against Skadden [New York Law Journal]
Lawyer v. Law Firm: A Law Blog Roundup [WSJ Law Blog]
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses [Skadden Insider]

The legal profession is populated by some colorful characters — like our latest Lawyer of the Day, Jack Tuckner. From the New York Post:

A leading lower Manhattan women’s-rights lawyer watched porn at his desk, discussed his “pierced genitalia” and wears a “slave” collar at work as part of a sadomasochistic relationship with his girlfriend, a shocking sex- harassment suit alleges.

Jack Tuckner, 50, whose law firm says it’s “dedicated to the empowerment of women in the workplace,” is a “self-described ‘testosterone-poisoned’ attorney with a penchant for bondage … who demeaned all of the women who worked for him,” says the suit.

It was filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court by former office manager Lisa Brockington.

But if the slave-collar-wearing Tuckner is the “sub” in the S&M setup, doesn’t that make it okay? Isn’t he the one being demeaned, rather than the one doing the demeaning?

More after the jump.

That’s the title of our latest column for the New York Observer, which reflects upon recent television and film portrayals of women litigators.

It touches upon some of the same themes highlighted in Amy Kolz’s excellent American Lawyer article from last year, but it’s more focused on fictional female litigators, as opposed to real-life ones. Here’s how it starts:

Whatever happened to Ally McBeal? If recent movies and television shows are any guide, the life of a female lawyer has gotten a lot less pleasant since the carefree, charmingly neurotic days of dancing babies and bathroom kisses. But today’s portrayals may be more accurate, and certainly more critically acclaimed.

Last January, Glenn Close won a Golden Globe for her compelling performance as Patty Hewes, a fearsome and wildly successful plaintiff’s lawyer, on the addictive TV show Damages. The following month, Tilda Swinton snagged an Oscar for stepping into the pumps of Karen Crowder, a hard-charging in-house litigator, in Michael Clayton.

In March, Julianna Margulies (of ER) returned to television as aggressive defense lawyer Elizabeth Canterbury, the title character of Canterbury’s Law. Even Katey Sagal, who embodied the famously vulgar Peggy Bundy on Married With Children, reincarnated herself this year as Marci Klein, the sleek, powerful, and ruthless founding partner of the law firm on Eli Stone.

You can read the full column over here.

Farewell, Ally McBeal; Enter the Litigatrix [New York Observer]

Ladies, if you want to make partner, consider Dorsey & Whitney. The Project for Attorney Retention has just released a report (PDF) on the number of women among this year’s new partners at 77 firms.

Props to Dorsey & Whitney and Ropes and Gray. Here’s why:

At a dozen firms, 50% or more of the new partners were women: Dorsey & Whitney (10 of 15 new partners are female, for 71%), Ropes & Gray (7 of 10 new partners are female, for 70%), Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (4 of 6 new partners are female, for 67%), Blackwell Sanders (8 of 12 new partners are female, for 67%), Cravath, Swaine & Moore (2 of 3 new partners are female, for 67%), Crowell & Moring (4 of 7 new partners are female, for 57%), DLA Piper (15 of 28 new partners are female, for 54%), Reed Smith (14 of 26 new partners are female, for 54%), Arnold & Porter (2 of 4 new partners are female, for 50%), Cadwalader (1 of 2 new partners is female, for 50%), Shearman & Sterling (3 of 6 new partners are female, for 50%), and Womble Carlyle (4 of 8 new partners are female, for 50%).

Women made up less than half of the new partners at the other 65 firms surveyed.

Some firms are in serious gender equality hot water. Here’s the list of shame:

Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein did not make a single female partner (0 of 8 new partners were female). For others, only one or two women lawyers were awarded the brass ring: Orrick (1 of 13 new partners is female, for 8%), Proskauer Rose (1 of 11 new partners is female, for 9%), Nixon Peabody (1 of 11 new partners is female, for 9%), Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman (1 of 11 new partners is female, for 9%), Baker & Daniels (1 of 9 new partners is female, for 11%), Vinson & Elkins (1 of 9 new partners is female, for 11%), Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge (1 of 9 new partners is female), Akin Gump (2 of 15 new partners are female, for 13%), Milbank (1 of 8 new partners is female, for 13%), White & Case (1 of 7 new partners is female, for 14%), and Gibson Dunn (2 of 13 new partners are female, for 15%).

Three firms have had nearly all-dude partner classes for four years running: Akin Gump, Fried Frank, and Vinson & Elkins. For those of you flirting with a career move from lawyering to screenplay-writing, think: Charlize Theron fighting her way to partnership at Fried Frank, à la North Country.

Law Firms’ New Partners Still Mostly Male: New Partner Classes 2005-2008 [Project for Attorney Retention]

Although many tipsters emailed us about it, we never wrote about this buzz-generating Wall Street Journal article, reporting on how many older lawyers are displeased by the overly informal, even sloppy attire of their younger colleagues. We didn’t write about it earlier because we felt preempted: the piece received lots of online attention, from such widely read outlets as the ABA Journal and the WSJ Law Blog, where it generated heavy comment traffic.

But now we have a new angle on it. Focus on these portions of Christina Binkley’s WSJ article:

[Winston & Strawn D.C. managing partner Thomas Mills] says he is partial to well-fitted Brioni suits for himself. He notes that the going rate for new associates in New York, Los Angeles and Washington is $160,000 a year — enough to buy suits while paying down school loans. Yet all too often, associates show up at work in jeans — attire that he doesn’t condone “unless it’s moving day.”

Winston & Strawn brought in a personal shopper from a local department store last year to address associates on how to shop and dress for work. Mr. Mills says that when some associates do make an effort to dress up, they seem to base their look on Hollywood. “You get the TV-woman lawyer look with skirts 12 inches above the knee and very tight blouses,” he says. “They have trouble sitting and getting into taxis.”

These remarks apparently didn’t go over too well back at Winston:

W&S DC office’s managing partner comes off as a total a**. His comments re: his custom suits are one thing. But his comments re: the way women in the office dress have created a stir….

People are seriously pissed, particularly the women. Man comes off as a total pig…. Read the article, you’ll see why.

This is prime ATL material. Firm has called impromptu associates meeting for 9:30 Monday, no topic given. But the guess is it is damage control.

The guess was correct. More about the meeting, after the jump.

If she hadn’t already gotten a shout-out in Morning Docket, we might have named Karyn McConnell Hancock our Lawyer of the Day. She’s the pregnant Ohio attorney who, as reported by the AP, disappeared for four days, then made up a story about being kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to Georgia. According to her husband, she had “a meltdown.”

Instead, since Hancock’s story has already gotten lots of MSM coverage, we’ll bestow today’s prize upon New York lawyer Thomas Decea. From a story in the New York Law Journal by Anthony Lin (who’s on a roll lately; two words: Charlene Morisseau):

A New York judge has ordered court supervision of a lawyer for “objectionable conduct” toward a female opposing counsel who he said had a “cute little thing going on” during a deposition.

According to transcripts of the deposition, Thomas B. Decea of Danzig Fishman & Decea in White Plains also called Michelle A. Rice of Arkin Kaplan & Rice “hon” and “girl” and asked her why she was not wearing a wedding ring.

It’s interesting to note that Michelle Rice, alleged possessor of the “cute little thing,” is a name partner in the law firm of legendary litigator Stanley Arkin — who’s renowned for his toughness.

The underlying litigation is also noteworthy. It involves Lowenstein Sandler, one of New Jersey’s largest and most profitable law firms (Rice’s client).

More excerpts and discussion — including an attempt to explain away Decea’s calling Michelle Rice “hon” as a reference to “Attila the Hun” — after the jump.