Looking to the Future By Deborah Guyol
WHERE WE WERE AND WHERE WE ARE My law school class when I graduated, in 1982, was about one-third women. But there were only two female professors, and of them, only one really counted because the other taught legal writing, considered a lesser post. After graduation, I headed off to a “Biglaw” firm in New York, where there were only two female partners. When I left that firm five years later, four of the 88 partners were women – not even 5 percent. Things are different today. Women now comprise, on average, around 19 percent of Biglaw equity partners1 and something under 40 percent of law school faculty. But wait: Women represent well over a third of all U.S. lawyers, and half of law school students. And it’s been 37 years since I graduated. Clearly things are not quite different enough. Here’s a snapshot of how we’re doing now.
Biglaw According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) “2018 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms,”2 the percentage of women who are partners at “major” (undefined) law firms increased from 12 percent in 1993 to 23 percent in 2018 – not quite doubling over a period of 26 years. And the 23 percent number covers metropolitan area averages from a dismal low of 16 percent to a more respectable high of 29 percent. This might look acceptable unless you consider that women comprised just over 35 percent of all 109,459 lawyers at the firms surveyed. Further, the term “partner” in this survey apparently covers both equity and non-equity partners. Another survey, Working Mother magazine’s July 2018 piece “The 2018 Working Mother 60 Best Law Firms for Women,” put the average representation of women among equity partners
at a slim 21 percent. In some of these “best” firms, only 14-15 percent of equity partners were women.3 Well, but the percentage of equity partners isn’t the only measure of progress, is it? Sadly, in the Biglaw world, it is the one people look to. Working Mother must have considered other factors in choosing its “best.” These are discussed below, in the “What Is to Be Done” section.
The Judiciary The National Association of Women Judges has tracked women on the state court bench since 2008. That year, 25 percent of state court judges overall were women, the state-by-state figures ranging from 13 percent to 42 percent. Ten years later, the number is 33 percent, with a range from 15 percent to 49 percent. While women are well represented in the judiciary in several states, many others have unfortunate records.4 As of 2016, on the federal bench, 36 percent of judges on courts of appeal and 33 percent of judges on district courts were women. According to the National Women’s Law Center Fact Sheet, the source of these numbers, women are still “severely underrepresented” on the 3rd Circuit and 8th Circuit benches, and there are six U.S. District Courts around the country where there has never been a female judge.5 Ideally, the makeup of the bench would represent the population as a whole, not the population of lawyers. Again, we’re not there. In many parts of the country, we’re not even close.
Solo and Small Firms In the most recent statistics – from 2005! – the American Bar Association (ABA) found solos to constitute 48 percent National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations
77
