This is an interesting article about how there are so many few women in leadership positions in law firms. The percentage has changed but not by much each year.
Women as top rainmakers can now be added to a list of rarities in large law firms, joining the small group of women on governing committees and an even greater rarity -- the female managing partner.
Whether this new statistic, measured in the latest survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers, can be seen as the fault of the firm or the fault of women lawyers themselves is a question the survey didn't answer.
In the four years that NAWL has conducted its National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms, there has been very little change in the data. Nearly the same amount of women are on management committees and in leadership positions as when the survey began and the numbers are small compared to the numbers of women entering the profession in the last two decades, according to the survey released Monday. [See NAWL's report on the survey (pdf).]
For the first time this year, NAWL asked firms about their key rainmakers and found very few were women. The survey tracked the gender of the top rainmaker and that of the top 10 and should be viewed in the context of a law firm sample that had a median of 22 female equity partners compared with a median of 120 male equity partners.
According to the survey results 46 percent of large law firms have no women at all among their top 10 rainmakers. Almost another third, or 32 percent, have only one woman on that list. About 15 percent of large firms have two women among their top rainmakers and 6 percent have three or four in the top 10. About 72 percent of large firms have no women at all among the top five rainmakers in the firm, the survey results showed.
"The results are astounding, even to those of us familiar with the dynamics of legal business development," NAWL said in its report on the survey.
NAWL admittedly couldn't explain the phenomenon and pointed to a number of reasons why women could be so underrepresented among leading business getters.
"Our data cannot tell us whether this underrepresentation is a function of less aggressive rainmaking activities among women, or the result of 'inherited' clients of the firm flowing to men, whether women are given opportunities to participate in business development on an equal footing with men, whether women are receiving credit for business development at the same rate as men, or if there is some other explanation for the observed differences," NAWL said in its report.
Roberta Liebenberg, chairwoman of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, said she has been working with other groups like the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and the Project for Attorney Retention on the issue of women rainmakers. She said it is difficult to tell why women might not be rainmakers at a certain firm. But the groups have heard anecdotally that women aren't always getting proper origination credit and aren't inheriting clients from retiring partners proportionately to men.
Regardless of the reason, the lack of women as top business generators affects other categories tracked by NAWL's survey.
NAWL said the data show firms with no women rainmakers in the top 10 have a much greater pay differential between male and female partners. Those firms with three or four women among the highest business producers have basically eliminated the differences in compensation between the sexes, according to the report.
In firms with no top female rainmakers, women make a median of $81,000 less than men. In those firms with 1 or 2 women in that group, women make a median of $56,000 less than men. Where there are 3 or 4 women as top rainmakers, women actually make a median of $11,000 more than men, though NAWL pointed out that was a small group of firms.
COMPENSATION GAP SHRINKS
The NAWL survey has tracked compensation since its inception and has historically found a gap in pay between the sexes, particularly the higher one goes in seniority. Some good news out of the survey was that the gap in compensation between male and female partners shrunk in 2009. But the report also pointed out that the smaller gap is likely an overall effect of reduced compensation at the equity level generally. Between 2008 and 2009, the median pay fell for all positions regardless of gender and was sharpest for equity partners. Pay for the equity partner category in 2009 fell below 87 percent of the median compensation in 2008.
In 2009, women equity partners made about $65,850 less than their male counterparts. Male equity partners earned a median compensation of $565,200 and women equity partners earned a median take home of $499,350.
The picture has improved slightly when looking at non-equity partners. Women non-equity partners made 87 percent of what their male counterparts did in the 2008 survey and they made 92 percent of their male counterparts' compensation in 2009, according to the survey. The median salary for female non-equity partners in 2009 was $250,000 compared to $275,000 for male non-equity partners.
LAYOFFS AND LEADERSHIP
For the first time since the survey began, NAWL tracked the impact of layoffs on women by tracking layoffs through June 2009. The results showed men and women were laid off in rates proportionate to their numbers as associates and partners.
The exception came in the area of part-time lawyers. Though fewer firms responded to questions about layoffs than other sections of the survey, the data showed nearly 100 percent of the part-time lawyers laid off were women even though they don't make up nearly 100 percent of the overall group of part-time attorneys.
Despite decades of women entering the legal profession at the same rate as men, there is a steady decrease of women at each higher position within firms.
In a typical firm, according to the survey results, women comprise 48 percent of first and second-year associates, about 45 percent of seventh-year associates, 34 percent of of-counsel positions, 27 percent of non-equity positions and 16 percent of equity partners.
These numbers are virtually unchanged since NAWL began the survey in 2006.
Liebenberg said the ABA and several other groups have been focused on raising the percentage of women in the equity partnership ranks. She pointed to a recent report by Catalyst, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing women in business, that said if law firms continue to advance women partners to equity status at this rate, it wouldn't be until 2088 that women gain parity in the firms.
When looking at two-tiered firms, according to NAWL, women comprise 10 percent of equity partners by year 10, 17 percent by year 15 and 18 percent by year 25 with the firm.
An even smaller percentage of women sit on firm governance committees than there are women equity partners. About 14 percent of the respondents have no women on those committees. Of those that do, the average percentage of female members has gone basically unchanged since 2006, with women making up 15 percent of those committees. Considering the average committee has 10 members, that usually means one or two are women, according to the survey.
In 2006, 5 percent of managing partners were women and in 2009, that number has moved to 6 percent. According to NAWL's report, the organization is aware, at least anecdotally, that there has been an increase in the number of women practice-group leaders.
A total of 116 firms responded to this year's survey.
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It doesn't surprise me. I used to work por KPMG LTD, and the number of women partners were really low. Most were Men - Certified Public Accountant and one woman -lawyer. Recently in the directory of the firm, there are more, but not much women Public Accountants, as a partners in that company, than women lawyers in the same position. I believe the same situation is with others firms like Deloitte, Ernst & Young, or others.
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