Women lawyers are starting to avoid big firms, survey says

Female lawyers aren't just having a tough time at big law firms these days. They're starting to avoid them altogether.

That conclusion, from the National Association of Women Lawyers' annual survey on retention and promotion, paints in bold relief the results of sexist personnel practices in law these days that are all too familiar. Summary Judgments readers in recent weeks have learned of the study at a big Wall Street firm where performance reviews underrated women and held back their careers -- and also that while leaders at the firm didn't doubt the study's results they felt no need to change their procedures.

The NAWL survey suggests this is far from isolated. For the first time since the survey started in 2006, it found fewer women are entering big firms, and that female lawyers are increasingly being relegated to non-partner track roles. "Not only do women represent a decreasing percentage of lawyers in big firms, they are more likely to occupy positions -- like staff attorneys, counsel, and fixed-income equity partners -- with diminished opportunity for advancement or participation in firm leadership," NAWL Foundation President Stephanie Scharf, a partner at Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Scharf, says in an accompanying statement.

And NAWL President Heather Giordanella herself a counsel rather than partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath adds that male power at firms is self-perpetuating. "Women lawyers already leave big-firm practice at a greater pace than their male counterparts," she said, "and this narrowing of the pipeline at the entry level, however slight, only further decreases the pool of women available for promotion."

Since the survey also found that "women continue to be markedly underrepresented in the leadership ranks" of firms, the disheartening situation for women at big firms seem unlikely to improve anytime soon.

(Published by Thomson Reuters - November 10, 2011)