Women Lawyers Still Struggling to the Top

By Heather Chapman (New York City)

Although nearly half of all law school graduates in the United States are women, women only make up 15% of the partners at law firms nationwide. To rectify this imbalance, bar associations and professional groups across the country have, in recent years, been implementing initiatives to challenge law firms to reorganize employment goals to allow for the advancement of women.

In 2004, in response to the low percentage of women in leadership positions in Chicago law firms (lower than the national average of 17.06 %, as per the National Association for Law Placement), the Chicago Bar Association’s Alliance for Women the created the “Call to Action” project, challenging firms to get more women into leadership positions over a three-year period. Participating firms signed a pledge to meet the following goals by December 31, 2007. Each of the forty-four firms that signed the pledge agreed to:

• increase the percent of its women partners by three percentage points from its 2004 levels;
• have women represented on every firm committee in the same proportion as the number of women partners at the firm;
• increase the number of women practice group leaders at the firm;
• review its flexible hours policy and its use in order to ensure that alternative schedules are an equitable and viable option; and
• materially improve any disparity in the rates in which men and women are retained, promoted, and laterally recruited at the firm.

However, a recent article in the ABA Journal found that, in 2008, almost a year after the “Call to Action” deadline, only eleven out of forty-four firms in the Chicago area have met the agreed-upon goals. While that is a 25% increase in the number of female partners, critics of the project are claiming that the inclusion of non-equity partners (a partner that does not have an ownership stake in the firm) is a flaw in the project. “[I]t’s easy for some firms to disguise the fact that women are not being elevated to [the] highest levels,” says Nicole Nehama Auerbach, a partner at Valorem Law Group and president of the Chicago Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law Firms, as reported in on ChicagoTribune.com.

Some members of the “Call to Action” project think that it should be thought of as more than just for counting the number of female partners, pointing out that several other goals have been met, including the flexible hours policy goals and the addressing of the pay rate disparity. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Suzanne Shier, a chair of Chapman and Cutler’s diversity committee, said that the project “has raised our consciousness,” pointing out that “[I]t got us to focus on specific targets and deadlines.” Chapman and Cutler had a 4.7% increase in the number of female partners in the last three years, making it one of the eleven firms to have met the levels called for by the “Call to Action” project.

Other associations in major cities across the United States have started similar programs. At the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Board of Governors meeting a year ago, Maria Feeley, co-chairman of the bar association’s Women in the Profession Committee, presented the committee’s proposed “Call to Action” and “Best Practices for the Retention and Promotion of Women Attorneys” plans, pointing out that firms can lose as much as $500,000 when an associate leaves. She mentioned that the National Association of Law Placement’s 2006 survey found a 78% attrition of women associates by their sixth year of practice. ”In addition to the fact it’s the right thing to do, there’s really a business case to be made,” Feeley said. “Attrition rates are terrible for firms. It does cost a lot of money when a firm loses an associate.”

In 2006, the New York City Bar Association put out a forty-five-page document of best practices for the retention and promotion of women attorneys, which had similar themes as the policies issued by the Philadelphia Bar Association. Brande Stellings, chairwoman of the NYCBA’s committee on the Women in Profession, said that the committee’s proposal was inspired by the current discrepancy between women and men entering and staying in the legal profession. “We were aware of significant efforts that had been made in other professions such as the accounting profession, which has similar challenges. We thought this would be a great forum or road map for firms or organizations that better wanted to retain and attract women.”

Also in 2006, the National Association of Women’s Lawyers (NAWL) issued a countrywide challenge, called the Challenge to the Legal Profession. Their challenge included the following goals: · to double the percentage of women equity partners, women general counsel, and women law professors by the year 2015; and· to see a third of the leadership levels of major law firms, corporations, and law schools will be women lawyers by the year 2015.

The full text of what has happened in the last two years, including steps that the NAWL has taken to help firms nationwide can be found here.

As you can see, legal associations around the country have recognized in the past few years the need for more female partners, as well as the need to address the disparity in income levels between male and female partners. Although desired levels have yet to be reached, it’s heartening to see that progress is being made and that firms and cities are willing to meet these challenges.