“You know, you are a pretty good boss, and I like working for this firm and all, but to be honest, this place is a little weak on diversity. So, I’m going to have to give you an F.”
Sounds like the setup for a skit from the Office, but in reality, this is what many of the top law firms in America have been hearing recently, thanks to a survey completed by Stanford Law students. The survey tallied the number of associates and partners at major firms that self-identified as African-American, Hispanic, Asian, female or gay. Then, the students set about handing out “report cards” ranking the firms on how well they have done on incorporating diversity into their firm.
A recent New York Times article by Adam Liptak called “In Students’ Eyes, Look-Alike Lawyers Don’t Make the Grade,” shed some light on the impact of this data on the law firm recruiting process. Surprisingly, the influence of the student survey has been far reaching. As students at elite schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford wrap up recruiting season around the country, and have a range of law firm job offers to chose from, where a firm stands on the diversity rankings can make the difference between an acceptance and a rejection from a top recruit. This is exactly what the Stanford students had hoped for: to influence the firms into changing their recruiting and retention practices so as to improve diversity.
In New York, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton got the highest grade, an A-minus, for reporting that 48.8% of the associates are female, 8.7% are black, 8.3% are Hispanic and 4.5% are openly gay.
Michele Landis Dauber, a law professor at Stanford, served as the adviser for the project, which is called Building a Better Legal Profession. The complete set of rankings are available on the project website. The report covers major firms in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago and Northern and Southern California. Take a peek to see how your firm stacks up.
On the website, the survey data can be displayed to rank all of the firms in a given market according to the number of female associates and partners. The firms in New York with the highest number of female partners were:
- Morrison & Foerster (23.3%)
- Jones Day (22.5%)
- LeBoef, Lamb (now Dewey & LeBoef) (22.2%)
- Davis Polk (22.1%)
- Winston & Strawn (22.1%).
The top five firms in New York with the highest number of female associates are:
- Carter Ledyard (64.6%)
- Hogan & Hartson (63.3%)
- Alston & Bird (59.6%)
- DLA Piper (58.8%)
- Baker & McKenzie (57.1%)
Interestingly, Wachtell Lipton, often considered New York’s top firm, ranked dead last in the gender diversity category and got an F, with 27.3% female associates.
Overall, this survey provides a large volume of useful data, but law students and lawyers should take note that the percentages are closely bunched together, meaning that a firm with 53% female associates gets an A whereas a firm with 45% female associates only ranks a D. Whether this 7% is statistically significant enough to account for the disparity in ranking is not apparent. Furthermore, while the raw data is interesting, it does not tell the whole story. More important than whether a firm has 43% or 45% women is how those women are treated at the firm, and whether they are encouraged to stay and develop their skills through mentoring, women’s networks and progressive part-time and maternity policies.
Thus, while this survey data is very helpful, and can be a great tool in helping to identify which firms need to improve their diversity efforts, it should not be taken as the final word on diversity at law firms. However, it provides a great jumping off point for more research into qualitative aspects of diversity in addition to the quantitative.
Be Bold Cocktails
NewsJoin Echoing Green’s Social Investment Council for the second annual Be Bold Cocktails,
celebrating the business of social change and saluting some of the world’s boldest leaders.
Be Bold Award Honorees:
Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
Richard Chilton, Founder & Chairman, Chilton Investment Company
Vikram Akula, Founder & CEO, SKS Microfinance and 1998 Echoing Green Fellow
Buy a ticket online, and support one of the only global organizations solely dedicated to early stage social sector investing.
https://www.events.org/cpage.aspx?e=11757
Why Do Girls Hate Algorithms?
Next LevelThe Glass Hammer team is attending the Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference in Chicago this week.
Only an estimated 20% of the total attendees at the FIA annual conference are women. So why are women so underrepresented in this field? And why is it that the women in derivatives trading mostly work on the business side not on the modelling or analytical side?
Dinka Krstulovich, owner of the executive search firm Martingale International Search comments that the MBA degree just isn’t giving people the preparation they need to become experts in quantitative analysis (known as a quant to people in the field). “To be a quant you need to have strong mathematical background and problem solving skills. Business side people are not quants, they can be in sales and marketing. They can even be the CEO, not they are not quants.”
There are only few schools that even offer a Ph.D. program in Financial Mathematics, including aCarnegie Mellon, Imperial College, London and Boston University.
Most of the Ph.D. students at the top schools in the United States spend years studying complex mathematical theories and algorithms while working on their dissertations in order to prepare themselves for jobs in the quantitative analysis field. It is a long and arduous route to obtain the necessary qualifications to work in this specialized field, and the application process is very competitive as well.
Dinka further explains,“of course there are Master’s programs that can help and teach you a lot and help to get there. It is still as good as having a Ph.D. in science. It always depends on your diligence and ambitions to get where you want to be.” Dinka also noted that Columbia University had some excellent courses on quantitative analysis, for those looking to pursue this field in the New York area.
So, once the women have the skills, will they have the desire to work in the quant business?
Read more
The UpDown: Fantasy Investing
Money TalksContributed by Lauren Davis
Move over, fantasy football. There’s a new game in town. The UpDown, a new fantasy investing site, enables its members to trade stocks rather than quarterbacks. The site provides each member with a $1 million dollar virtual portfolio, which they can then invest and grow, all without the risk of putting up any of their own money.
Fantasy stock picking can be a great way for women who are starting out in finance to increase their confidence in the stock market and their tolerance to risk in a friendly, collaborative environment where they don’t have to be afraid of failure. For these reasons, the site has proved very popular with women users. (More so than fantasy football, but the sporty women who brave the office fantasy pool will be the subject of a forthcoming Intrepid Women article).
According to cofounder and CEO Michael Reich, The UpDown was envisioned as a way to harness the “wisdom of crowds” to create a powerful investing tool. In addition to investing, The UpDown members provide analyses and tips on stocks, and can rank and provide feedback on the stock analyses of other members. Reich’s hope is that, as it grows, The UpDown will consistently beat the S&P 500, and he notes that, even though the site is only a few months old, a handful of members have already doubled their portfolios. And, even though it deals in play money, the site offers a very real incentive for members to do well: it pays cash to members whose portfolios outperform the S&P, as well as for the week’s most insightful stock analyses.
Read more
Tips For Updating Your Resume
Next LevelAre you coughing from the dust kicked up by your resume as you wipe the cobwebs off of it? If you are looking for a new job but haven’t updated your resume in awhile…here are a few pointers for how to present yourself well on paper and get that dream job.
According to Distinctive Documents, an organization affiliated with The National Resume Writer’s Association as well as the Professional Association of Resume Writers, the purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. It’s supposed to reel your future employer in and prepare them to be blown away by your face-to-face meeting.
Sadly, your resume is also an elimination tool. The markets are tight and your competition is inevitably highly qualified. When you factor in online job applications, employers could receive over 500 resumes on their desk for each position. They will sift through them quickly and pick out about 20 qualified resumes that have caught their eye. So its important that your resume, at first glance, says everything about you that you can’t say in person yet.
On their website, Goldman Sachs posts various tips on what your resume should look like when it lands in the hands of your future boss. First, Goldman recommends you consider the visibility of important pieces of information. Think about block capitals or different size fonts to draw attention to those specific accomplishments. At the same time, think about how your resume looks aesthetically. Make sure that the layout flows well and that the font is legible and not too small or cramped.
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Blowing Off Steam with Yoga
Intrepid Women SeriesIs work making you want to punch someone? I found a cure to release the office- related stress and help your head from exploding…it’s called Bikram Yoga. After the very first class, I felt ready to take on the world.
I went through a phase where I was at the gym every day, even on Sunday. I discovered the benefits of exercise during the break-up of my first serious relationship. I found an activity that could help me release all that pent-up energy. I became addicted to that one hour of me time…and there was that business about losing weight.
The hour I spent at the gym stayed constant as I switched jobs and found a new boyfriend. I bought the latest issue of People or Us Weekly, climbed on to the treadmill and worked my worries away.
Read more
Happy Thanksgiving : A Letter from the Publisher
NewsThe Glass Hammer has been live for just over two months now. We want to thank you for your support so far. We set up this online community as a “go to” place for women in finance to read news and advice to advance their career. Uniquely, the site is somewhere where we can go to share our related life experiences as let’s face it, the financial markets make for a different type of career.
We are all humans in our cubicles at the end of the day. We have lives and interests as well as being kick ass in our day jobs. You aren’t on your own, the women in the skyscraper next door is probably going through the same thing. We quickly found that anyone servicing the financial markets like lawyers and gals in financial IT found a home at The Glass Hammer. It’s good that we are sticking together; men have been doing it for years!
Our team are women who have worked in the securities industry in different forms and we thought that it would be cool to go to just one site to find out what’s going on in the industry. Find out also who is throwing a good networking event, what training is out there to improve skills and finally look for a new job if the time is right. All in one place. We hope you like it too. Let us know if we are missing any worthy event or if there is something you would like us to cover.
We hope that you are enjoying reading the news and advice that we try to provide from a unique perspective – mostly contributed by women in the industry (some men too have offered to write). This for a site for you, and some of it is written by you.
If you would like to write a blog for us or be interviewed by our team of writers please contact me nicki@theglasshammer.com
We can publish you anonymously – we want the good, the bad and the ugly.
Enjoy your turkey if you are in the US and if not, then happy Thursday – the weekend is just one day away.
Top Law Firms Don’t Make the Grade on Diversity
News“You know, you are a pretty good boss, and I like working for this firm and all, but to be honest, this place is a little weak on diversity. So, I’m going to have to give you an F.”
Sounds like the setup for a skit from the Office, but in reality, this is what many of the top law firms in America have been hearing recently, thanks to a survey completed by Stanford Law students. The survey tallied the number of associates and partners at major firms that self-identified as African-American, Hispanic, Asian, female or gay. Then, the students set about handing out “report cards” ranking the firms on how well they have done on incorporating diversity into their firm.
A recent New York Times article by Adam Liptak called “In Students’ Eyes, Look-Alike Lawyers Don’t Make the Grade,” shed some light on the impact of this data on the law firm recruiting process. Surprisingly, the influence of the student survey has been far reaching. As students at elite schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford wrap up recruiting season around the country, and have a range of law firm job offers to chose from, where a firm stands on the diversity rankings can make the difference between an acceptance and a rejection from a top recruit. This is exactly what the Stanford students had hoped for: to influence the firms into changing their recruiting and retention practices so as to improve diversity.
In New York, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton got the highest grade, an A-minus, for reporting that 48.8% of the associates are female, 8.7% are black, 8.3% are Hispanic and 4.5% are openly gay.
Michele Landis Dauber, a law professor at Stanford, served as the adviser for the project, which is called Building a Better Legal Profession. The complete set of rankings are available on the project website. The report covers major firms in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago and Northern and Southern California. Take a peek to see how your firm stacks up.
On the website, the survey data can be displayed to rank all of the firms in a given market according to the number of female associates and partners. The firms in New York with the highest number of female partners were:
The top five firms in New York with the highest number of female associates are:
Interestingly, Wachtell Lipton, often considered New York’s top firm, ranked dead last in the gender diversity category and got an F, with 27.3% female associates.
Overall, this survey provides a large volume of useful data, but law students and lawyers should take note that the percentages are closely bunched together, meaning that a firm with 53% female associates gets an A whereas a firm with 45% female associates only ranks a D. Whether this 7% is statistically significant enough to account for the disparity in ranking is not apparent. Furthermore, while the raw data is interesting, it does not tell the whole story. More important than whether a firm has 43% or 45% women is how those women are treated at the firm, and whether they are encouraged to stay and develop their skills through mentoring, women’s networks and progressive part-time and maternity policies.
Thus, while this survey data is very helpful, and can be a great tool in helping to identify which firms need to improve their diversity efforts, it should not be taken as the final word on diversity at law firms. However, it provides a great jumping off point for more research into qualitative aspects of diversity in addition to the quantitative.
Diary of a Leaver: Connie’s Diary, Week 4
Mentors and SponsorsConnie Thanasoulis recently left her job at Merrill Lynch and has been chronicling her experiences for The Glass Hammer…
Week 4:
I’ve decluttered my own house so much that I am now helping my mom with her projects. She’s 74 years old, and part of the reason I left work was to spend more time with her. She’s been a cigarette smoker all her life and I decided I didn’t want to wait to spend time with her when she had an oxygen tank strapped to her back, so we are spending more time together now. Today, we went to visit my aunts (her sisters) and had a few laughts. Later on we went on a good shopping trip. I promised not to rush her, which she liked.
Last week, I enlisted my sister’s help and together tackled the disaster in my mom’s walk-in cedar closet. We sorted through the piles and threw out about eight bags of very dusty, very old things. We found a message box from when we were kids and games we used to play with. We found about ten free give-away tote bags, which we had no idea why our mother saved. I swear, companies should stop giving those things away. The entire population of New York has about ten each, just taking up space in their closets.
My mom is always one to stash away money in crazy corners, so we had to open EVERYTHING before tossing it away. She didn’t disappoint us. Sure enough, there in the bottom left corner of the closet was her stash. After the massive clean up, we put her money right back where it was. She’s a riot.
She’s the best mom I could have every hoped for and I’m thrilled I get to see her more. I think she is too! This is what life is all about.
Adaptability – from Aboard the Paris-London Eurostar Train
Next LevelMy last article talked about training. If I had to plot a graph of “Dullest vs Most Valuable Training,” I would proudly place proper typing skills in the upper right hand corner. But the mind-numbing hours of practice have certainly paid off over the years. As colleagues pick out letters on their keyboards using the hunt-and-peck method, I effortlessly pump out prose at high speed. (That’s not to say my accuracy’s all that, in triu8rth my backspace key is worn to a shine).
Today, I believe I’ve achieved my personal best. As I type, I’ve reached speeds of roughly 170 mph and I’m feeling pretty smug… as I sip coffee & munch a croissant, tapping my backspace key on the London-Paris Eurostar train.
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Passions, Part 1: Skydiving
Intrepid Women Series, PassionsThink that only a crazy person would jump out of an airplane at 13,500 feet and free fall towards the ground before your parachute opens? Well it might be a little crazy, but its also incredibly fun, at least according to the skydivers I talked to.
I have always been curious about skydiving, as I’m a pretty adventurous person and it seems like the last frontier in extreme sports. I’ve tried bungee jumping, hang gliding and parasailing, but something about skydiving whispers in my ear, “that stuff is all for wimps! Try jumping out of a plane!” I have tried to sign up for skydiving lessons in various countries and at different times in my life, but somehow, it hasn’t happened yet.
Then, I had dinner with my friend Joanna, who had just been skydiving the week before. She has been twice, and completely loved the experience. “It’s the rush of a lifetime,” she said excitedly. “It’s the closest you will ever get to flying.” She describes the experience of jumping out of a plane as both terrifying and incredible, and says that she would go back tomorrow if she didn’t have to go to work.
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