Lexis Hub for New Attorneys: Building a Better Legal Profession: Building a Better Legal Profession: Data and Women in the Legal Profession:


LexisNexis Sites

Global | About This Site | Contact Us | Sign on to Lexis.com®

	Home >Building a Better Legal Profession > Building a Better Legal Profession Data and Women in the Legal Profession	* Required fields Recipient’s name:* Recipient’s email:* Your name:* Your email:* Message: Your email has been sent. Close

Sign On| Register Here Free

Building a Better Legal Profession

6/16/2009 10:36:51 PM EST

Data and Women in the Legal Profession

By Matthew Schwieger

Posted by BBLP

Using firm reported data very similar to that used by Building a Better Legal Profession, the release of The American Lawyer’s study of Women in Law Firms shows nearly identical results. While the findings across the 210 firms that responded to The American Lawyer survey were heartening to an extent, it was found that women make up 34 percent of lawyers and 45 percent non-partners and 19 percent partners. Still, little improvement has been made compared to previous studies cited in The American Lawyer. While arguably difficult to parse with a rather large sample of data with numerous unaccounted for or disaggregated variables like practice areas and geographic location, the Women in Law Firms study has stirred insightful dialogue.

A diversity consultant by the name of Arin Reeves of The Athens Group suggests that the best measure for all-around diversity at a firm may be the number of women of color who are attorneys as “women of color are the canary in the mine.” Building a Better Legal Profession data is capable of illustrating just this point on both a firm-wide and market specific basis. In fact when considering Reeves’ critique using Building a Better Legal Profession data, firms that appear to do well overall in the Women in Law Firms actually flounder on a market basis when concerning both women of color and women at large.

Staying true to the numbers found in the Women in Law Firms study and in Building a Better Legal Profession’s data show it would be inaccurate to paint all firms as failures when it comes to employing and promoting women. In the big picture of women in law firms surveyed by The American Lawyer, however, it is difficult to escape that “for every women who’s made partner, there are three women in the nonpartner ranks” while “there is about one male nonpartner for each male partner.” Certainly this disparity could have historical grounding but given trends in law school attendance by gender this is not an acceptable explanation for the opportunity gap for female attorneys at elite law firms. Just take a look at these opportunity gap tables provided by Building a Better Legal Profession and you will be able to see this abhorrent trend more explicitly.

While a historical view of women in the profession would suggest that great progress is being made, The American Lawyer has some reservations as partnership rates for female attorneys are rather stagnate, “and while the ranks of female partners have grown steadily, women still account, on average, for fewer than one in five big-firm partners.” Even as the data puts women in law firms in focus and generally exposing the mostly equity-absent big firms, there is a great deal of use for this data. Just as the mission of Building a Better Legal Profession is to use data to empower law students to choose a firm that best fits their career expectations, the Women in Law Firms study underscores that simply some firms are hardly an ideal career option for female attorneys.