The Baby Effect: More Billables for Men, Fewer for Women

Work/Life Balance

The Baby Effect: More Billables for Men, Fewer for Women

Posted Mar 24, 2008, 05:06 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A Canadian study suggests that having children leads to fewer billable hours for female lawyers and more for their male counterparts.

The study of 670 lawyers at an Alberta law firm found that mothers with school-aged children billed fewer hours than childless women, while fathers with preschool-aged children billed more hours than childless men, according to a synopsis posted on TaxProf Blog.

Researchers Jean Wallace and Marisa Young conclude that billables dropped for the mothers because they were more likely to have partners who also work, putting more of the onus on the moms to handle household tasks and childcare, according to a blog published by business consulting firm Abeceder. The fathers, on the other hand, were more likely to have a partner who did not work and could take on more responsibilities.

Female lawyers without children had the highest billable hours of all the groups studied—more than male lawyers with or without children.

The study also found that men and women took advantage of family-friendly benefits in different ways. Fathers took advantage of flexible work policies to pursue leisure activities while mothers used them to tackle domestic duties.

A hat tip to Legal Blog Watch, which posted the news.

Comments

Report Abuse

Posted by Shocked - 8 months, 5 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes ago

This is shocking news! In other news, the sun is yellow . . .
Posted by Justin - 8 months, 5 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes ago

This is one of the arguments for why women still make less money than men, as a group. If the majority of women at a firm have children, and one of the major ways of determining raises/promotions involves reviewing billable hours, its inevitable that the female group will remain at a lower level, as a whole.
Posted by Nancy - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes ago

Really, then why are the women without children who are billing more than everybody making more?
Posted by Nancy - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes ago

Why aren’t they making more?
Posted by Seriously? - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 46 minutes ago

Really? I am flabbergasted! SOMEONE PAID TO DO THIS STUDY? I should quit the law and just do “studies” that prove what everyone already knows.
P.S. New study out shows that cigarettes are bad for you.
Posted by gm - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 38 minutes ago

To # 2: but I don’t remember the article stating that childless women who billed the highest number of hours were also PAID the highest compensation—I highly doubt that that’s the case…
Posted by infant - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 32 minutes ago

The sun is yellow in pictures drawn by 1st graders. In the adult world the sun is a mixture of gasses and has many hues. If the news of this study isn’t shocking then perhaps you’re angry, Shocked, that it is getting attention. I’m glad some light is being shone more and more on this issue because simply admitting women into law school has not magically solved the problem of the imbalance of power between men and women. As a whole, for all of society, we need a balance and studies like this show us a good place to start talking about it. Thanks. And for you, Seriously7, and your flippant remark about a new study out showing cig’s are bad. Well, that’s only if you smoke them. Don’t be so smug about this so called “truth” that is not worth reporting. It is, indeed,worth reporting and discussing.
Posted by Stephen - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes ago

So the stay at home dads really are not bringing down the billable hours that we thought they might. That is outstanding insight.
Posted by Bob - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 19 minutes ago

Note this study was done in Canada in a single law firm. I have trouble believing the stat that women without children bill more than anybody, or at least believing it is a stat which would apply broadly to the practice of law across the US. That’s not consistent with my experience.
Posted by Cara - 8 months, 5 days, 6 hours, 7 minutes ago

What is shocking about this study is that the researchers copped out and concluded that the moms billed less because their partners work. The moms bill less because their partners are (I assume mostly) husbands - men don’t share the work because they are men, not because they also have jobs (OK, maybe in addition, but let’s face the fact that the dads, working or not, are “shockingly” less helpful than moms). The fathers bill more because their partners are wives, not solely because their partners stay at home. “Women partners pick up more slack than men” is the real conclusion of the study.

The data re the non-mom females says it all - women do more work (whether domestic or paid) and men do less. Period.
Posted by Scout - 8 months, 5 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes ago

Yet another reason for BigLaw to take a second look at second-career female lawyers who worked full-time and went to law school at night. Why there should be any doubt that this kind of person has the drive to survive BigLaw is beyond me.
Posted by Peach - 8 months, 5 days, 5 hours, 3 minutes ago

Scout:
Doubt that this kind of person has what it takes is not really genuine doubt. It’s patriarchy.
Posted by K - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 48 minutes ago

It is irresponsible of the ABA to generalize from one study in one firm in Canada. What the heck does that prove?

The melodramatic Enquirer like Headlines on this ABA newsletter are really getting tiresome. Not sure what the point is.
Posted by G - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes ago

Well put Cara!

Isn’t anyone troubled by the fact that men with children work more hours than men without children? What does that say about their interest in family life? No wonder women with children bill less hours - Dad is never home to share domestic work.
Posted by Sue - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes ago

Peach/Scout: It’s also bias. The fact is that schools like Harvard and Yale do not have evening programs. If you want to continue working and go to law school in the evening, you’ll most likely have to go to a so-called “third tier” school. Law firms think that they’ll get a better lawyer from an Ivy League, which is complete bull. I’m a woman who worked full-time and went to law school at night. In my opinion (admittedly biased as well), I agree that what I did shows more drive to succeed than a Yale legacy frat boy going to law school because daddy wants him to.
Posted by Clinton - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 41 minutes ago

When this topic comes up, I am always amazed that so many people start talking about how unfair it is that those who work fewer hours, for whatever reason, do not have the same level of success as those who work more hours. First of all, this article doesn’t deal with compensation in any way. Secondly, do those who think this is unfair realize that the practice of law is more than a profession, it is also a business? At the partner level in particular, generating revenues will result in greater compensation. All other things (such as business generation) being equal, someone who works 2000 hours generates a lot more income for a law firm than someone who works 1800 hours. So you know what? They earn more. At the associate level, the differential may be less significant because so many firms pay salaries in lock step, but your life as an associate is only so long.

The bottom line is that this is a business, not a petri dish in which social experimentation is to be undertaken.
Posted by Ben Dover - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 24 minutes ago

Yea, these women ought to just stop whining. Im tired of hearing how women who don’t work as much (or as hard) for whatever reason want parity (or more) to the poor slobs who work. Then there’s the dame up there who said that men with kids work longer because they don’t want to do domestic chores. Dont that dame realize that the poor schlub has more mouths to feed so he’s under more pressure to bring home the bacon for mom and the kids to eat? Always looking to put down the men. Last week it was the minorities who were complaining. Just shut your mouth!
Posted by Sue - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 15 minutes ago

#17 - Why don’t you use your real name? It’s so easy to be racist and sexist when you hide under a white hood.
Posted by Scout - 8 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 7 minutes ago

Another thing BigLaw doesn’t seem to get is that people in evening programs went to that particular school in order to hold onto a valuable job; it wasn’t the only school they could have gotten into; in fact, quite possibly, they had the scores and grades to go almost anywhere they wanted to. However, I feel that I got a top-notch legal education in my evening division, which leads me into the comment about the rankings article. I have my doubts that employers should use those rankings for anything more than snob-appeal. I am aware that in the world of law, though, even that has value.
Posted by Clinton - 8 months, 5 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes ago

Again, this is common sense. Success in law school is the best indicator of likely success in the practice of law available to us. Success on the LSAT is the best indicator of success in law school available to us. Those law schools which are marginally ranked, are frequently so ranked because their students are deemed marginal. And the reason they are deemed marginal is because, in general, their LSAT scores and undergraduate performance is marginal. Well guess what? When you connect the dots, you start to realize that those people who do poorly on the LSAT end up at marginal schools and, on the whole, really are not as likely to succeed in the practice of law as those who went to good law schools and presumably did well as undergrads and on the LSAT. Sure, the LSAT and even law school performance are imperfect indicators of success as a lawyer, and sure there are exceptions to these general rules; but they are the best indicators that we have, and while there are exceptions to the general rule, it would be absurd to ignore the general rule just because those exceptions exist. Don’t blame “Big Law” because you went to a marginal law school. You should have known better.
Posted by j - 8 months, 5 days, 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

I agree with Cara’s post. The article fails to highlight the statistic that childless women billed the most hours.

The title of this article is misleading. Rather, than point to the fact that women overall bill less hours than men, it should emphasize that were it not for domestic and child care duties, women would be billing at a higher rate than men.

In short, the title should read something more like this: Women Work Harder than Men
Posted by Winston Churchill - 8 months, 5 days, 2 hours, 41 minutes ago

Ahhhh, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Nowhere does it say that childless women work more hours. It only deals with billable hours. Factor in time spent in business generation (rainmaking), firm management, etc., and perhaps the picture is different. You’d need to do a comparison among childless women and all men at the same level of practice (e.g., partner, asociate) to draw any inferences regarding discrimination.

As someone who served as a managing partner, let me assure you that in the compensation equation rainmaking beats billables any day. My advice to all those childless women is to spend more time on rainmaking. You’ll get paid more.
Posted by Laura Elfvin - 8 months, 5 days, 2 hours, 27 minutes ago

I agree that women need to get a break. They’ve been getting the short end of the stick for years. Men get jobs, but don’t bear children. Women do both. Women should be able to work part time and bring up the kids if they want to without worrying about making the partnership rung unattainable. After all, a woman who has carried a baby to term has a lot in common with CEO’s who have to carry a whole organization on their back. I think women should only work 30 hours a week if they’re pregnant and afterward, and men should work 50 all of the time to make up for the fact that they don’t play a day to day role in upbringing. If they do, then they can work 40.
Posted by Clinton - 8 months, 5 days, 1 hour, 53 minutes ago

Laura, please see my post about law firms being businesses and not a venue for social experiments to correct social inequities.
Posted by Maurice - 8 months, 5 days, 1 hour, 52 minutes ago

Priorities people, priorities…I know everyone wants to be a homemaker, CEO, good spouse, make managing partner, be the person we all aspire to be, make the most money, and generally be treated equally throughout society.

Reality is this…EVERYTHING has an opportunity cost. Spending more time with my son outweighs any benefit of receiving money or status (which sounds to me what most people want or they wouldn’t complain about this subject) amongst my peers. I can say this, I probably don’t make as much money as 90% of the people responding to this article, am not a managing partner, but at the end of the day I am no worse off than any of you.

I actually feel sorry for a childless woman who bills more than a man. What does that say about those types of women? When they die, what are they going to have to show for themselves but a time slip. I’m sure the managing partner will be able to pull himself away from his “billable” hours to pay his respects at the woman’s wake. What a life!

P.S. #23 your rationale is enlightening…
Posted by Rick - 8 months, 5 days, 50 minutes ago

“...women still make less money than men, as a group”

If the above is true, I would expect to see women hired at a much higher rate than men, since a company can pay a woman less and get the same production as a man. Why doesn’t this happen more often ... ?
Posted by WWW - 8 months, 4 days, 22 hours, 1 minute ago

“Women work harder than men” ... “Women pick up the slack more than men” ...
I’m so delighted that the “professional” women here are using this as a sounding board to demonstrate (with resounding clarity and persuasion, I might add) why they’re so superior to their male counterparts. Look at us silly guys… how did we ever delude ourselves into believing that we actually do anything productive at the workplace? Good thing we have childless women to lead us in times of peril.
Posted by Aggravated - 8 months, 4 days, 21 hours, 37 minutes ago

The reality is that managing clients is more fun, more lucrative, and less draining that actually billing time. It is a rare attorney who builds his/her own client base from whole cloth. Much of the compensation gap between men and women has nothing to do with how much time they bill - but, rather, has to do with who is “groomed” to inherit clients. And, unfortunately, that has everything to do with the Patriarchy noted at comment 12 above because women are just as good, if not better, than men at managing client relationships when given the chance. My expectation is that once women partners get their fair share of business inheritance, everything else will fall in line. Of course, another key issue is marrying men who will take on their fair share of the childrearing and domestic responsibilities, and encouraging their male colleagues to do so and enjoy a better work/life balance resulting in a more level playing field in the workplace. But, the reality is that childrearing is only for a relatively small segment of a parent’s career, so, it’s important to recognize that it does not tell the whole story by any means.
Posted by bg - 8 months, 4 days, 18 hours, 58 minutes ago

The reason single women work more hours than moms or men is that we are generally not allowed to leave work early, unlike parents or men. Especially during the warmer months, parents many attend their children’s sporting events, leaving early at least once, often twice a week, to do so. Many men, whether parents or not, also leave work early to attend sporting events, whether college or of whatever professional sports the community offers. Childless women, especially those who are also single, however, are expected to stay in the office and work, despite the fact that every else gets to leave early to play. Since we do not have children, we do not have a suitable excuse to leave early. [Needing to get groceries, pick up the dry cleaning, do laundry, cook dinner, mow the lawn, and week that irksome flowerbed since it is going to rain this weekend and I have no spouse or children to help me in these chores tends not to be a valid excuse.] Should we so much as dare to change our routine, alter some factor of our lives, schedule a doctor’s appointment, sneeze, or even look out the window, our commitment to the firm is called in question. I am a single woman with no kids and when I bought a house, the usually rational partner I work with had a fit! Suddenly there was something in my life that might interfere with work, never mind that I already had interests outside of work. I was accused by the firm’s management of not being committed to my job, despite the fact that I had only taken one day off to move. Perhaps the best indicator of just how truthful his statements were came in my annual review, when I was informed that I billed more last year than the year before. Guess that is what happens when you sit in your office and work when everyone else is at the ballpark, whether Little League or Triple-A.
Posted by Share the burden - 8 months, 4 days, 14 hours, 3 minutes ago

bg (number 29), I have also worked for employers like this. My dental health actually deteriorated for two years because I was forbidden from leaving the office during work hours. There is a lot to be said for “workplace culture.“

What I don’t understand is those posters (largely men) who deride and resist like mad women’s parity in the profession. Women’s rights are human rights are men’s rights. For far too long, men have been assumed to fall happily into line bearing the overwhelming burden of supporting with one paycheck an entire family of children and another adult. Men have missed out on their kids’ lives in so many ways. Equality at the firm or office means men will have equality in those aspects of life that make life worth living. I’m amazed more men aren’t jumping on this bandwagon; rather, they spew vitriol against women for wanting to equalize these burdens.

What part of this does not make sense?
Posted by Nan - 8 months, 3 days, 5 hours, 15 minutes ago

Wow! How profound! A study was necessary for these common sense observations. This is akin to studies that conclude eating too much contributes to obesity. Such a waste of time and funding.
Posted by The dude - 8 months, 2 days, 4 hours, 42 minutes ago

#10 - “men don’t share the work because they are men, not because they also have jobs “

#28 - “women are just as good, if not better, than men at managing client relationships when given the chance”

Had these comments been the other way around and came from a man, they would have been considered sexist. I suppose if your not a white male, then its ok to be racist and sexist.
Posted by Moe - 8 months, 2 days, 24 minutes ago

Women with kids bill less, you’re right, that’s not news. But men with kids bill more than men without? What is going on here? And why are their wives letting them get away with it?

Commenting has expired on this post.

ABA Journal - Law News Now

Work/Life Balance