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Women Lawyers: Slowly Chipping Away At The Glass Ceiling

Kudos to the brave women lawyers who filed suit and are the instigators of change in the legal profession.

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Employment discrimination and sexual harassment allegations have been making headlines for weeks now, and it’s about time. These are systemic issues that need to be addressed, a task that is far easier said than done. But the recent slew of allegations are just a start. Shedding light on the pervasiveness of the problem is the first step toward eradicating it.

Not surprisingly, the legal profession is not immune from gender discrimination and women lawyers often encounter it on the job. That women lawyers encounter discrimination is not surprising to me and shouldn’t be to anyone else. Nearly every woman attorney I’ve spoken to has faced gender discrimination at various stages of her legal career.

What is surprising, however, is the spate of class-action lawsuits alleging gender discrimination that have been filed against large law firms in recent years. After learning of the latest lawsuit, I wondered: why now?

And then last week I stumbled upon an article from Time in my RSS feed. That article in conjunction with the recently released McKinsey and Company 2017 Women in Law Firms Report answered that question for me.

According to the Time article, the recent tidal wave of sexual harassment and assault allegations across various industries and the law firm gender discrimination lawsuits are the result of increasing numbers of women in higher-level positions across professions. When the percentage of women in positions of power reaches “critical mass,” change begins to occur at an increasingly rapid pace:

If it seems like the structures that enable sexism are exploding, that’s because they scientifically are, according to the theory of critical mass. When women reached 20% in the Senate, they went after the Pentagon to reform the military’s sexual-assault protocol. When they reached 25% of Hollywood producers, they took down Harvey Weinstein and his casting-couch culture. And when they reached a third of the White House press corps, Fox’s Roger Ailes, NPR’s Michael Oreskes and other serial harassers in the media began to get called out. Somewhere in that zone, when women comprise 20% to 30% of an institution, things begin to change.

The results of the Report support this conclusion. Women lawyers have, in recent years, reached that “critical mass” in positions of power and leadership in law firms:

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Women are relatively well represented at all three associate levels (junior, midlevel, and senior), where they account for about 46 percent of attorneys. However, this picture changes sharply as attorneys advance to more senior levels. Only 19 percent of equity partners are women, and women occupy only 25 percent of 2 Women in law executive-leadership positions (management committee and practice leadership).

That being said, although the numbers of women lawyers at higher levels of the legal industry may be reaching a level that induces change, the overall statistics regarding the advancement of women and minority lawyers remain depressingly abysmal. As shown in the chart below, white men still rule the roost:

Importantly, according to the Report, the majority of women lawyers surveyed were more likely than their male counterparts to believe that the playing field is uneven and as a result, they will be or have been denied the opportunity to advance because of their gender. The slower advancement was caused by number of different factors, all of which contributed to their predicament:

More than 60 percent of women surveyed think that their gender will limit their advancement opportunities; only 14 percent of men have such a concern (Exhibit 5). Women are considerably less likely than men to think that promotions and assignments at their firm are based on fair and objective criteria. The strength and depth of client relationships is perceived by female attorneys as the number-two factor in the partner-election decision (second only to profitability), and they believe they have fewer opportunities than male attorneys to network with clients (57 percent compared with 67 percent).

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Also covered in the Report are the myriad of work/life balance issues encountered by women lawyers working their way up the ladder. As explained in the Report, firms have approached these issues in a variety of ways, but none have been particularly effective. This is because the gender diversity issue is typically viewed as one that is unique to women lawyers:

Until firms find ways to make diversity a firmwide issue, not a “women’s issue”—and an issue that galvanizes the partnership and demands accountability for progress—they
will likely struggle to translate programs and policies into results.

In other words, it’s unlikely that the solution to the gender diversity and discrimination issues faced by women will be solved internally. Enter the external solution: multiple employment discrimination lawsuits against Biglaw.

Those allegations and the end result of the lawsuits are what will likely bring about change. The pace of change may not be as rapid as we’d like, but it will be change nonetheless. So kudos to the brave women lawyers who filed suit and are the instigators of change. After decades of stagnancy, it will be a welcome change — and one that is long overdue.

Niki BlackNicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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