BigLaw could retain more women by hiring from lower-ranked schools, research suggests
Female graduates of law schools ranked in the top 10 are more likely to make an early exit from BigLaw than female grads of lower-tier schools.
After their first three to five years in BigLaw, women from top 10 law schools leave their firms at a much higher rate than those from lower-ranked schools, report Law.com and the Careerist blog.
ALM Intelligence senior analyst Daniella Isaacson conducted the study. “Firms are fighting for the same associates from the same schools,” she tells the Careerist. Isaacson says firms could increase their diversity and retain more women if they “cast a wider net.”
The research doesn’t explain why there are differences in dropout rates. But the Careerist suspects the higher dropout rate among women from top law schools is because “they have the luxury of choice.”
The Careerist notes prior research on women who graduated from elite colleges, who also drop out of the workforce at higher rates. Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch conducted the college study, and she speculated that more women from top colleges dropped out because they came from wealthier families and didn’t need to work. They also may be marrying men who also had elite educations and the capacity to earn more, Hersch concluded.
The Careerist suspects those same factors come into play for women grads of top law schools. “Which brings us back to those women who went to less-prestigious law schools and less-comfortable backgrounds,” the Careerist writes. “Is anyone surprised that it’s often the hungrier ones who have staying power?”
