Survey Says Income Gap Grows in ‘Overwhelmingly Male’ BigLaw

Law Practice

Survey Says Income Gap Grows in ‘Overwhelmingly Male’ BigLaw

Posted Nov 15, 2007, 05:43 pm CST
By Martha Neil

A survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers paints a gloomy picture of the legal profession, as far as the advancement of female attorneys at the country's 200 largest law firms is concerned.

"Among its findings, the survey shows that there is a growing income gap between men and women lawyers as they move up the partnership ranks, that the large majority of women who start as associates in firms are not promoted to equity positions or law firm leadership roles, and that law firm governance is overwhelmingly male, with fully 15 percent of the surveyed firms lacking a female on its top committee," NAWL reports in a press release today.

At every level, male lawyers earn more than their female counterparts, the bar group writes. "Male of-counsels earn roughly $20,000 more than females, male nonequity partners earn roughly $27,000 more than females, and male equity partners earn almost $90,000 more than female equity partners."

On average, women represent just under 17 percent of the equity partners at large law firms.

Although NAWL apparently has not immediately made a copy of this year's survey available on the Web, the findings are not greatly changed from last year's survey.

It found that women comprise just 16 percent of equity partners, despite the fact that they have constituted half of the country's law school graduates for the past 15 years, notes a Legal Intelligencer article written shortly after the 2006 survey results were released.

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Posted by Jay Gatsby - 1 year, 2 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours, 1 minute ago

Another article citing a study that claims the existence of a pay gap, and implies discrimination, but makes no mention whether the study controlled for various factors. Chief among these factors is that many women attorneys do not place as much emphasis on their careers as their male counterparts because of family obligations. Much broader studies, which were subject to proper controls, concluded that pay is at parity, if not higher for women due to their relative scarcity in particular fields.
Posted by www.lawdomains-us.com - 1 year, 2 weeks, 1 day, 14 hours, 14 minutes ago

Pay gap or no, two facts are quite clear from the constant reporting on salaries at Big Law 1) Big Law is pure ego and greed; and 2) the real pay gap that goes unrecognized is the one where the assistant DA gets less than $42K with a JD, but an RN, engineer, or construction worker can pull down $50K in any market in the U.S. with little effort and little experience.

Women, hell, there’s a serious pay disparity between the dumb average guy and the kid with an uncle at the firm, too. The dead founder’s incompetent nephew makes approximately $60,000.00 more than the exceptional but personality challenged mid-level associate. Can we get some data on that?

Seriously, folks, the practice of law is an ugly mistress when it comes to equity… gross disparity is judt part of the game. Those with the ego and the cjones to match take what they want from those with… well, those with no cojones

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