The Old Boys Network Is As Strong As Ever -- Study Finds Male Clients Prefer Male Attorneys

Depressing, but entirely expected, news.

I am both utterly unsurprised and unspeakably angry about the latest study by Acritas, which reveals that male clients prefer working with male attorneys. On the one hand — duh. Women parters have been out there hustling, and still ~70 percent of law firms have 0-1 women in their Top 10 earners. But on the other hand, COME ON — how much slower is this “equality” thing really going to go?

The numbers reveal that in only 17 percent of cases do male clients choose a female attorney to lead their matter — that’s a third less than the incidence of female clients selecting female attorneys to lead their projects. And all this is despite the other (seemingly obvious) finding from the study: whether the team was led by a male or female attorney did not impact the quality of the work done. As Vivia Chen at Law.com reports:

Based on interviews conducted in 2016 with over 2,000 senior in-house counsel at $50 million-plus revenue companies around the world, Acritas reports the following:

  • Mixed gender teams significantly outperform single-sex teams on all industry-recognized key performance indicators.
  • Teams led by male and female partners performed equally well.
  • But male clients are a third less likely than female clients to choose female lead partners. (Male clients chose a female lead in 17 percent of cases, while female clients picked a female lead in 25 percent of matters.)

Chen goes on to note that women who’ve made it to the peaks of Biglaw partnership aren’t (all) fazed by the results of the study. You have to imagine that they’ve seen some of the worst sexism the industry has to offer, and this merely comports with those experiences:

“People give business to friends,” says a former Big Law woman partner. “So, if a client is male—as most clients are—he will often give business to his frat brothers, law school roommates, golf partners, fellow club members, etc.” The only “fix,” she adds, “is to have women rise to more positions of power as clients.”

But Lisa Hart Shepherd, CEO of Acritas, which authored the study, has a more concrete solution. She believes that the bias that has male clients picking women to lead their cases a shockingly low 17 percent of the time is an unconscious bias, and imposing quotas on the attorneys they select will improve the problem:

“People don’t realize that they have this bias, and quotas would solve that problem,” explains Shepherd. “The quota should be targeted at a level to help female partners.”

She proposes that both male and female clients mandate that one-third of the lead partners they hire be women. “This will start to balance the power and increase the chances of equity for women,” she adds.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, but is Corporate America ready for quotas?

“The brave clients will do this,” says Shepherd. “If clients use the power they have, the firms will listen.”

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I’m certainly not holding my breath, but the work Acritas does — putting hard numbers to the sneaking suspicion women have long had — is essential if we are ever going to move forward.

GENDER DIVERSE LEGAL TEAMS OUTPERFORM SINGLE GENDER TEAMS [Acritas]
Male Clients Disfavor Women Partners [American Lawyer]


headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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