Equality Still Not There for Female Lawyers
Last week the ABA Journal re-ran a piece from last August on reasons experienced women (20-plus years) left the practice of law at large law firms.
It was no surprise that many had been mistaken for lower level employees and a large percentage left for caretaking commitments. The numbers show that only about 20 percent of equity partners in big shops are female.
This despite the fact that women have become about half the enrollees in American law schools.
At Creighton, the latest published figures show that females constitute 52 percent of the students and at UNL, last year’s One-L class was half women.
The top-ranked U.S. law schools are approaching fifty percent women with Yale, for example, at just under 48 percent and Harvard about the same.
This is a profound leap from 47 years ago when Creighton graduated only two women out of 110 and the next year only four.
By 1975, when the number finally reached the teens, women were shining intellectually and in leadership. A female editor-in-chief led the law review, although she wasn’t the first: Maureen McGrath had that honor in a class (1971) with only four women. A woman was the president of the Student Bar Association and another was the moot court champion in 1975.
A significant number of women have gone on to top careers in law (from the judiciary to elected positions to partners in firms, to academia to corporate executives). However, in the practice itself, there is still a very real pay gender gap, as reported by Alison Monahan in “The Balance Career” this past May 6. This may be because of the area of practice or the fact that women took time away from the job for kids. Or it may be because of plain old bias.
Innovations in practice – Skyping, allowing young children at the office, shared hours, etc. –may yet bring law practice into the 21st Century where women will be fully rewarded for their talent and not asked to get the coffee.
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