Biglaw

The Largest Law Firms With The Most Women Lawyers (2020)

An important ranking to show which firms are helping women achieve successful careers in the law.

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(Photo via Getty)

Earlier this week, thanks to the recently released National Law Journal 500 ranking, we found out which U.S.-centric Biglaw firms were the biggest of them all in terms of headcount. As a companion piece to the NLJ 500, today we’ve got the NLJ Women’s Scorecard, a ranking of the percentage of female attorneys and percentage of female partners at the largest 350 firms in the country.

For this ranking, both equity and nonequity partners were counted as partners, while nonpartner or “other” figures include special counsel, of counsel, and other staff attorneys. Temporary and contract attorneys aren’t included in the count. In the event of a tie, the higher rank is awarded to the firm with more female equity partners.

In all, 265 of the country’s 350 largest firms by head count reported data for the scorecard. Among the respondents, women accounted for 37.2% of the firms’ 143,454 lawyers in 2019, and 47.7% of 68,250 associates. …

Female representation at the partner level once again lagged in 2019: across the board, women comprised only 24.2% of all partnerships, out of 59,176 total partners, and only 20.5% of the equity partnership ranks.

Without further ado, here is the NLJ Women’s Scorecard Top 10 for 2020:

  1. Berry Appleman & Leiden
  2. Fragomen
  3. Hanson Bridgett
  4. Littler Mendelson
  5. Constangy Brooks Smith & Prophete
  6. FordHarrison
  7. Wood Smith Henning & Berman
  8. Manning Gross + Massenburg
  9. Ogletree Deakins
  10. Jackson Lewis

You may be wondering where the largest, namebrand Biglaw firms appear on this list. While the majority of the top 30 firms on the scorecard have a headcount of about 300 or less, there were some exceptions, with Fragomen, Littler, Ogletree, Jackson Lewis, Ropes & Gray, Wilson Elser, Shook Hardy, Gordon Rees, Lewis Brisbois, Baker McKenzie, and Quarles & Brady all making an appearance in the top 30. Firms like Ropes & Gray and Ogletree both made major strides, with Ropes cracking the Top 20 for the first time ever (the firm’s chair is a woman and four of its 10 board members are women) and Ogletree joining the Top 10 (the firm recently created a sponsorship program to support female nonequity partners advancing to the equity level).

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Congratulations to all of the firms that succeeded in boosting their ranks in this year’s Women’s Scorecard by placing women in leadership roles and fostering a pipeline of female and diverse attorneys.

You can check out the rest of the rankings here.

The NLJ 500: Our 2020 Survey of the Nation’s Largest Law Firms [National Law Journal]
The NLJ 500: The Women in Law Scorecard 2020 [National Law Journal]
The NLJ 500: Where Are Women Winning? [National Law Journal]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked 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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