Recession tips the balance against female lawyers
Let's not mince words - the recently-released survey from The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) tracking women at the 200 largest US law firms is a real downer. "I had hoped to see better numbers," says NAWL president Dorian Denburg. First, the familiar bad news: NAWL finds that women constitute only 15% of equity partners at leading US practices (it's been the same rate for the last five years) and are barely represented in the most influential committees at their firms. What's more, nearly half of the firms say that there's not a single woman among their top ten rainmakers.
November 09, 2010 at 10:51 AM
3 minute read
Let's not mince words – the recently-released survey from The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) tracking women at the 200 largest US law firms is a real downer.
"I had hoped to see better numbers," says NAWL president Dorian Denburg.
First, the familiar bad news: NAWL finds that women constitute only 15% of equity partners at leading US practices (it's been the same rate for the last five years) and are barely represented in the most influential committees at their firms. What's more, nearly half of the firms say that there's not a single woman among their top ten rainmakers.
Now, the new bad news: Contrary to those optimists who say that the recession has had a positive effect on work/life balance issues, women did not fare well during the recession. In a nutshell, the changes in the profession and the economic downturn have not been kind to lawyers in general and women in particular.
One change in the profession is the proliferation of non-partner-track lawyers. NAWL finds that 80% of US top 100 firms and 50% of 'second hundred' firms employ staff lawyers. But the big surprise is that "more than 60% of staff attorneys are women – the highest percentage of women lawyers in any category or practice, and by definition, a category with little possibility of career advancement."
But given the relative novelty of the staff attorney position, the report cautions that "it is perhaps too soon to predict that [this job] is or will become a 'pink' ghetto. Nevertheless, it is a phenomenon worth watching."
The other trend concerns the impact of part-time work on women's careers. According to NAWL: "In the typical large firm, about 6% of the lawyers are working part-time, and 75% of these part-time lawyers are women. Moreover, 80% of women working part-time were doing so during their first 20 years of practice while, in contrast, 70% of the men working part-time had been in practice more than 20 years."
Not only are the part-timers "frequently viewed by their firms as insufficiently committed to their careers," says NAWL, but they also ended up getting the axe faster than other groups during the recession.
The report states: "In the 2009 report, we noted that almost two-thirds of firms terminated one or more part-time lawyers and that, in the typical firm, 100% of those laid off were women. For 2010, the numbers and percentages have not improved substantially: 56% of firms terminated one or more part-time employees, and in 83% of those firms, more women than men were terminated."
The upshot, concludes NAWL, is that "there is no significant gender effect from the involuntary layoffs of full-time lawyers," though "women bear the brunt of layoffs of part-time lawyers."
But NAWL is not passing judgement on the wisdom of doing part-time work, says Denburg: "It's a very personal decision. But do I think it's a great pipeline for equity partnership? No."
The Careerist is a blog by American Lawyer Media.
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