A quick glance around most law firms today, and you would be hard-pressed to see many female partners running the show. Not only do women constitute a mere 16 percent of equity partners, but only 6 percent serve as their firms’ managing partners and barely 15 percent serve on their firms’ highest-governing committee. These percentages, courtesy of the National Association of Women Lawyers’ 2009 “Survey on the Retention & Promotion of Women in Law Firms,” show no change from 2008 and have barely advanced since the survey began in 2006.
To find out how women can attain top management roles in their firms, we interviewed female partners in positions of power as well as partners on their way up. Ruth Fisher, Bonnie Eskenazi and Alison Ressler are on the executive committees of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Greenberg Glusker and Sullivan & Cromwell, respectively. We also spoke with managing partners: Andra Greene at Irell & Manella; Vicki Freimann at Carroll, Burdick & McDonough; Carla Christofferson at O’Melveny & Myers; Ann Marie Mortimer at Hunton & Williams; and Gail Title at Katten Muchin. We talked with Katherine Forster of Munger, Tolles & Olson and Tiffany Hedgpeth of Bingham McCutchen, as well, to gain the perspective of junior partners on their way up.
Rainmaking as a Path to Leadership
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