Full-time female lawyers earn 77 percent of male lawyer pay

Median pay for full-time female lawyers was 77.4 percent of the pay earned by their male counterparts, according to data for 2014 released earlier this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. In all law-related jobs, median pay for female workers in 2014 was 51.6 percent of the pay received by…

Mar 17, 2016 8:10 AM CDT

Bill would require public companies to report gender of board members

A bill intended to increase the representation of women on corporate boards has won the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y, introduced the Gender Diversity in Corporate Leadership Act on March 7. The Chamber told Maloney in a letter that it supports the bill,…

Mar 16, 2016 9:15 AM CDT

Women could be majority of law students in 2017; these schools have 100-plus female majorities

If trends continue, women will outnumber men in law schools in 2017, according to a legal blog’s analysis of ABA statistics. According to Associate’s Mind, the percentage decline in students attending law school is greater for men than women. From 2011 to 2015, the number of men attending law school…

Mar 16, 2016 6:15 AM CDT

Gender gap in associate promotions and turnover is higher when bosses are conservative, study says

Gender disparities in associate promotions and turnover are greater when male partners in the associates’ practice area are more politically conservative, according to a study of the nation’s largest 200 law firms. One of the study authors, University of Michigan assistant professor Seth Carnahan, spoke about the findings in an…

Mar 3, 2016 10:15 AM CST

43 percent of young, female Florida lawyers have experienced gender bias, study says

Statistics alone don’t measure the gender bias encountered by young women lawyers surveyed by the Florida Bar. The 464 women who completed the survey provided the bar with 90 pages of anecdotes about bias and poor treatment, the Florida Bar News reports. The bar sent the survey to female members…

Mar 3, 2016 5:45 AM CST

More ‘best firms’ have females as top rainmakers

Mar 1, 2016 1:30 AM CST

Minority women are disappearing from BigLaw—and here’s why

Occasionally when Jenny Jones walks down the hall of her white-shoe law firm, a chairman emeritus will stop and ask how she's doing and about her work. These moments are a highlight because outside of this intermittent interaction, Jones feels largely ignored by the powers that be.

Mar 1, 2016 12:15 AM CST

How to respond to ‘You don’t look like a lawyer’

A columnist offered some advice to a female lawyer who wondered how to respond when people tell her “You don’t look like a lawyer.” The lawyer, “Susan,” said she is a “reasonably attractive” female lawyer in her early 30s who dresses “in a stylish yet conservative way.” When she meets…

Feb 22, 2016 6:15 AM CST

Proposed rule that makes workplace bias an ethics violation not going far enough, ABA president says

The efforts of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility to add provisions that would make it misconduct for lawyers to knowingly discriminate or engage in harassment in conduct related to the practice of law received generally positive reviews from about a dozen speakers who testified at a…

Feb 8, 2016 8:31 AM CST

How to interrupt bias in the workplace

There’s no shortage of discussion about lack of diversity in the workplace, especially the legal profession. But solutions to the diversity problems and ways to combat implicit bias are harder to come by. That’s where Joan C. Williams, a feminist legal scholar based at the University of California’s Hastings College…

Feb 6, 2016 12:03 PM CST

Diversity is the primary reason for decision to increase size of ABA leadership ranks

When the ABA House of Delegates considered a number of proposals in August to revise the association's governance structure, the process resulted in a familiar outcome: The existing structure was left pretty much intact, while the size of all three of the association's key leadership entities grew.

Feb 1, 2016 1:00 AM CST

Megyn Kelly of Fox News handled law firm ‘macho culture’ as a former lawyer

Megyn Kelly was a lawyer at two well-known law firms before she became a Fox News anchor who tangled with Donald Trump in a debate. DNAInfo has a story on Kelly’s legal past, citing information in a New York Times Magazine profile and a 2014 story by Business Insider. Kelly…

Jan 28, 2016 7:44 AM CST

Star litigators exit Paul Weiss to form new trial firm with other BigLaw attorneys

Two star litigators are exiting Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison to form a new trial firm. Along with Beth Wilkinson and Alexandra Walsh, partner Sean Eskovitz of Munger,Tolles & Olson will be the third name on the marquee at Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz, reports the Am Law Daily (sub.…

Jan 21, 2016 3:05 PM CST

Partner’s ‘slave’ comment to contract attorney led to tweet that launched a law firm

Yondi Morris was already unhappy about her job as a contract attorney when a comment by a partner at the firm for which she was then working prompted her to do something about it. After walking over to see how Morris was doing, “he just looked at me and said,…

Jan 14, 2016 4:05 PM CST

Lawyer sanctioned for telling opposing counsel it’s ‘not becoming of a woman’ to raise her voice

A California lawyer has been ordered to pay deposition costs and to donate $250 to a women’s bar group after telling opposing counsel it wasn’t “becoming of a woman or an attorney” to raise her voice during a deposition. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal sanctioned lawyer Peter Bertling of Santa…

Jan 14, 2016 7:45 AM CST