A Look At The Staggering Sexual Harassment Numbers In The Legal Profession

These numbers should serve as a wake up call to the legal industry.

A new international survey reveals that sexual harassment in the legal profession is truly at epidemic proportions. The survey, with almost 7,000 respondents, was conducted by the International Bar Association and market research company Acritas and asked both lawyers and nonlawyers in the legal profession from 135 countries questions about sexual harassment and bullying within the industry. The results are disheartening, to say the least.

Over a third of women — 36.6 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men — say they’ve been victims of sexual harassment. When in comes to bullying nearly 1 in 2 women say they’ve been a target, compared with 1 in 3 men who say the same.

Another interesting aspect of the survey parsed out which jobs in the legal industry experiences the highest incidences of harassment. Surprisingly, those in government legal jobs reported the most harassment — 52.5 percent of women, and 18.2 percent of men reported they’d been sexually harassed at work.

There were also higher than average rates of harassment reported in the judiciary, but only by women — 46.6 percent of women in the judiciary reported harassment and 0 percent of men did. In-house legal departments also seem to have a disturbing amount of harassment, 42 percent of women and 9 percent of men said they’ve been sexually harassed in the workplace.

Law firms had the “best” numbers when it comes to sexual harassment — not that harassment at these levels is good. 32.7 percent of women and 6.7 percent of women at law firms reported they’ve been sexually harassed at work.

According to the survey, the most common forms of sexual harassment were: sexist comments, including inappropriate humor or jokes about sex or gender (67.9 percent); sexual or sexually suggestive comments, remarks or sounds (66.8 percent); being looked at in an inappropriate manner that made them feel uncomfortable (52.2 percent); and any inappropriate physical contact such as patting, pinching or brushing up against the body (48.6 percent). But even the less common forms still happen at a disturbing rate: sexual propositions, invitations or other pressure for sex (24 percent); seriously inappropriate physical contact, for example, kissing, fondling or groping (21.6 percent); receiving sexually explicit content or propositions via email or social media (13 percent); implicit or explicit demands for sexual favors in exchange for employment or promotion (6.7 percent); and physical assault or rape (3.1 percent).

These numbers should serve as a wake up call to the legal industry — we need to do better.


headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. 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).