Biglaw

Last Year, Women At This Magic Circle Firm Earned About 40 Percent Less In Bonuses Than Men

Women are being seriously shortchanged at this Biglaw firm.

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Linklaters has a problem: women in the firm’s senior associate ranks are being shortchanged when compared their male colleagues. Say hello to the Magic Circle’s gender pay gap in merry olde England.

Under the Equality Act 2010, companies in the United Kingdom with more than 250 employees must submit data to the government each year on their gender pay gaps. Law firms are not required to submit data on their equity partners. Earlier this week, Linklaters became the first Magic Circle firm to release data on its 2017 wage information for men and women, and at first glance, the numbers seem pretty stark. Men at the firm, on average, received about 58 percent more in bonus money and about 23 percent more in hourly pay than women. On the bright side, slightly more women at the firm earned bonuses than their male counterparts in 2017 (about 78 percent versus about 76 percent). Take a look at this table:

Rather than separating attorneys from staff members, the firm has broken down its pay data into four separate quartiles. From the firm’s report:

Women in the firm’s upper pay quartile — likely senior associates — earn 6.50 percent less than men, which is very disappointing. Linklaters explains away the fact that its average pay for women is lower than it is for men by providing details for its lowest pay quartile, which significantly impacted the firm’s overall gender pay gap data:

We have a more significant gender imbalance within our lower pay quartile. The roles that sit within this lower quartile are predominantly secretarial and junior business team positions, and around 80% of these roles are held by women. Whilst these roles are competitively rewarded with reference to the market, the fact that so many of them are held by women has the effect of reducing the average pay of women in our firm, impacting our overall gender pay gap.

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As we mentioned above, it’s disheartening that women who have been with the firm long enough to be in its upper pay quartile are being paid less than men, but Linklaters seems pretty upbeat about it. The firm wrote in its report that “[w]hile we still have some way to go, the gender balance in our upper, upper-middle and lower-middle pay quartiles is encouraging evidence that our efforts over recent years to attract and retain women in more senior roles have begun to pay off.” The firm is “confident that [it] pay[s] men and women fairly for equivalent roles.”

Many law firms have yet to submit their gender wage gap data, but a few have. For example, Silver Circle firm Herbert Smith Freehills revealed that women earned 30 percent less in bonuses and 19 percent less in average hourly wages than men.

Gender-based pay gaps remain at Linklaters and many other law firms in the U.K. and the U.S., but it is only through transparency that we can begin to address the issue. Reporting like this calls attention to the fact that women continue to earn less than men for the same jobs, and when firms are forced to publicly release potentially embarrassing data like this, things may change — and quickly.

2017 UK Gender Pay Report [Linklaters]
Linklaters becomes first magic circle firm to reveal gender pay gap data [Legal Week]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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