Overall dissatisfaction among women in the legal profession is especially high. The rate of dissatisfaction for female attorneys in private practice rose from 29 to 41 percent from 1984 to 1990, according to an American Bar Association Study conducted in 1990. The rate for male attorneys during the same years rose much less significantly, from 14 to 28 percent. What does this indicate about women in the legal profession? It appears that the playing ground is level during law school (with women now enrolling in numbers almost equal to men), but sometime after the first few years of practice, the picture begins to change.
The Post-Grad Blues
There appears to be another big discrepancy between male and female lawyers. In a nutshell, male lawyers make more money:
- In a 1995 survey of young lawyers by the ABA, the median annual salary for the male respondents was $50,000- $59,000-for the females it was $40,000-$49,000.
- In a 1995 survey conducted by Working Woman magazine, annual earnings for women lawyers averaged $47,684, compared to an average of $64,324 for men.
- A 1994 Price Waterhouse survey reported that male attorneys holding the position of general counsel make 19 percent more than their female counterparts.
There are also a disproportionate number of female partners who are non-equity partners. This was confirmed in a National Law Journal survey of women and minorities at the nation's 250 largest law firms. Female partnership constitutes 13-6 percent of all law partners, but only about half have equity (ownership, or share of the partnership profits, as opposed to salary). Non-equity partnerships have become commonplace in recent years. For example, according to that same National IMW Journal survey, the firm with the highest number of female partners is Reid & Priest, with 39.7 percent. However, 22 of the 31 female partners, or 71 percent, are non-equity partners.
Almost twice as many women than men in private practice are dissatisfied, reporting that they continue to experience a far more negative work environment than men as lawyers. Here are some of the reported reasons:
- More women report that they don't have the opportunity to advance (30 percent vs. 21 percent) and that advancement is not determined by the quality of one's work (32 percent vs. 24 percent)
- More women report that they are not respected and treated as professional colleagues by their superiors (13 percent vs. 7 percent)
- Women continue to be far worse off financially than their male colleagues in most positions
- Fewer women are partners (only 18 percent of the female respondents, compared to 45 percent of the men)
Aside from any inherent prejudices against women, according to The New York Times ("Women Striving to Make it Rain at Law Firms," May 21, 1996), women do not bring in the "rain" (i.e., business) as much as the men do. Why not? According to the article, women rarely partake, or have an opportunity to partake, in sports or other so-called "male bonding" activities; have more family pressures that prevent them from doing a lot of entertaining or business travel; are not, in general, confrontational enough for litigation careers; or do not like confrontation all together.
These women also claimed to not be in the best position to woo the "plum" clients of law firms: major corporations (which are still controlled primarily by men). In fact, a recent census conducted by Catalyst, a nonprofit women's research group reported that women hold just about 2 percent of the power positions in corporate America. And of the nation's 500 largest companies, only 61 have a woman among their five top earners, or have a quarter or more of their officers who are women. The American Corporate Counsel Association has over 10,000 members; slightly less than 3,000 were women at last count.
So what can you do? Of the women who are partners at major New York firms right now, many have succeeded by finding powerful mentors-both male and female-or by practicing in non-litigation areas such as trusts and estates, labor law, real estate, matrimonial law. But there are other, simple things you can do, too:
- Answer your own phone
- Call your clients regularly (even if you have no business reason, just to say hello)
- Go out to lunch
- Network with people very senior and very junior to you (the junior people will remember the people who were kind to them)
Given all of the above, it is no wonder that some women have decided to leave the practice of law. In fact, of the 719 associates who started working at five of the top-grossing law firms in 1987, almost all of the women-a staggering 94 percent- have left their jobs, compared to 72 percent of the men (New York Magazine, December 11, 1995).The vast majority of female hires left big firms after several years, even before partnership was a confirmed no.
Martha Fay Africa, partner in the recruitment firm Major, Hagen and Africa, and chair of the ABA Glass Ceiling Task Force, calls the 50 percent of women lawyers who leave private practice within five years of starting "Darwin's daughters." According to Africa, "They leave to better ensure survival for themselves and their children. It is survival of the fittest...the people who survive are the people who leave. They are.. .leading full and satisfying lives."
Africa believes that the large law firms have no incentive to change because of the market forces of supply and demand. "Law firms are quite secure at the entry level," she said."They have a steady stream of people .''Africa goes on to say that, at upper levels, women have sometimes been able to craft situations that work in small law firms or have left for in-house counsel positions in Corporate America.
It's a Big Boat and We Are All In It
Although there's a high degree of dissatisfaction for women lawyers, it doesn't seem to be a phenomenon of the legal profession. In fact, women lawyers seem to have commonalities with most women holding executive positions. A Fortune magazine study in September of 1995 reported that, 300 career women, ages 35 to 49, had considered the following:
Starting a business: 45%
Changing jobs in same career: 44%
Going back to school: 38%
Taking a sabbatical: 37%
Changing careers: 35%
Leaving job and not working: 31%
Of course, not all of the reasons here are completely unique to women. Men who leave the legal profession cite many of the same motivations as women: the "up-or-out" mentality, the long hours, the endless confrontation of litigation. The law is no longer a profession today but a "business."
But there are some particular complaints you may hear over and over from women lawyers, some of the most common being:
- Hated the fighting inherent in litigation
- Wanted to do "good things" for people
- Conscious decision to have a more "balanced" life
- Wanted to spend time with family
- Wanted to get away from the "sweatshop mentality" of today's law firms
- Had to hide, or lie about, child rearing and/or family-related activities (including in at least one case, the fact that the lawyer had children at all)
- Dislike of office politics/frustration over lack of possibility of forming good relationships, lack of bonding.
- Not invited to participate in social and networking opportunities, such as going out for drinks after work.
There is a major trend in both the private and the public sector toward mediation and arbitration instead of litigation. Alternatives to traditional litigation - the field now called alternative dispute resolution - is becoming more popular. Another hot area of law emerging right now is elder law, due to the problems inherent in an increasingly aging population. Female attorneys appear to be taking this area by storm, occupying about 40 percent of The Academy of Elder Lawyers legal staff. Another growing area, intellectual property, boasts a high percentage of female lawyers who are copyright attorneys-40 percent are female. And finally, employment law also reports a high per-
Women are continuing to be a major force in the practice of law at all levels, despite the apparent obstacles. It appears that women are continuing to enroll in law school in very large numbers. According to the Law School Admissions Counsel Law Services Report, women make up nearly half of the national law student population. In 1996, the female applicant pool was approximately 46 percent.
Additionally, female lawyers are better equipped now to do the all-important "power networking" necessary to obtain clients. With more women obtaining high-level positions (such as corporate counsel jobs), the "boys clubs" that were once off limits are now going coed, leading to more business opportunities for women in general. According to the 1995 ABA study on women in the legal profession, the number of women in senior-level corporate counsel positions is increasing between 3 and 5 percent annually.
Let's not forget that two women-Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor-are Supreme Court Justices, not to mention Attorney General Janet Reno. And let's not forget about Hillary Clinton-another successful female attorney who is certainly blowing some of those old first lady stereotypes out of the water.
The Power Brokers
In addition to specialty areas of practice, the general business climate also seems to be favoring women right now. The number of woman-owned businesses surged 43 percent between 1987 and 1992, according to a Census Bureau study. Women now own more than six million businesses in the United States-far outpacing the male entrepreneurial counterparts. Other end-of-the-century phenomenons are the trends toward setting up shop at home and working on a project-by-project basis instead of on a full-time basis. With the prices of PCs, e-mail, fax machines, and other office equipment coming down to the average consumer's level, there's less and less reason to schlep across hill and dale (or pavement and toll plazas, as it were).
So, the seemingly unusual career paths that many of the women attorneys have chosen have turned out to be not so unusual in the final analysis. For many reasons-some specifically related to the practice of law and some related to general societal and economic factors-some women are choosing not to stay in the practice of law. It is disappointing that one of the professions in which women were thought to have made the greatest strides and have the most opportunities has the same setbacks that women have struggled to overcome for centuries. But there is certainly no reason to throw in the towel if you truly love practicing. Law is still a very high paying profession with much opportunity-tapped and untapped. Your job is to figure out if it is, in fact, the right profession for you.
