Family-Friendly Policies May Be 'Double-Edged Sword'
Do family-friendly policies interfere with women’s ascent to equity partnership?
That’s the question raised by the Careerist blog and an American Lawyer article on women equity partners in the country’s largest law firms. The Careerist notes a “big irony”: Some law firms with two-tier, family friendly policies had fewer female equity partners than one-tier, “super elite” firms.
Among the one-tier firms with the highest percentages of equity partners are Davis Polk (with 23 percent female equity partners), WilmerHale (23 percent), Paul Weiss (21 percent), Ropes & Gray (20 percent), and Simpson Thacher (19 percent), the Careerist says.
Among the lower-scoring two-tier firms with liberal family-friendly polices are Perkins Coie (with 9 percent female equity partners), Duane Morris (9 percent), and Crowell & Moring (13 percent).
“Choice might be a double-edged sword,” the Careerist writes. “If women had the option of flexibility, would more of them opt for the pink ghetto of income partnership? Some women readily say yes.”
The American Lawyer article examined data from 70 of the nation’s top 100 firms; the other 30 firms didn’t participate or provided incomplete figures. The study found that women make up, on average, only 17 percent of partners, even though about 51 percent of law grads are now women. At multitier firms, 45 percent of the woman partners have equity status, compared to 62 percent of the males.
Topping the rankings was labor and employment firm Littler Mendelson. The firm had the highest percentage of all women partners, at 30 percent, and the highest percentage of women equity partners, at 25 percent.
