The Project for Attorney Retention just released the results of a 4 year study which charted the percentage of women making partnership in BigLaw. There's a nifty chart in the study results, should you care to take a peek.
Not surprisingly, women didn't fare all that well. How depressing.
From the study:
For some time now, we have known that the lack of women in leadership positions at law firms is not a pipeline issue. Women have been graduating from law schools at a rate of 40% or higher since 1985 and entering private practice at the same rate as their male counterparts – 70% – during that time...We collected promotion statistics for a total of 77 law firms representing a variety of sizes and locations. We chose these firms based on inclusion in prior years’ surveys, firm size, reputation and availability of information. We also combined the new information with the data that we had collected in previous years so that, for the first time, we could see whether a particular firm has made strides or slipped over the past four years...
At a dozen firms, 50% or more of the new partners were women...
At many firms, between a third and a half of the partners promoted this year were women...
However, other firms are seriously lagging behind...
Some of the most interesting information can be found by examining the trends for individual law firms. For instance, in all but one of the past four partnership classes at Crowell & Moring women have been 50% or more of the firm’s new partners. Likewise, women have been 40% or more of the new partners in the past three partnership classes at Cadwalader. DLA Piper has had three years of steady but moderate progress followed this year by a substantial increase to 54%. In two of the three previous partnership classes at Ropes & Gray, women have been more than a third of the new partners and the firm this year was one of the path-breakers with 70% of its new partners being women. In contrast, at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, the percentage of women promoted to partner has steadily decreased in each of the last three years (30% in 2006, 20% in 2007, and 11% in 2008). And at some firms such as Akin Gump, Fried Frank, and Vinson & Elkins, women have been virtually absent from all of the past four partnership classes.
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