Hostname: page-component-669899f699-cf6xr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T22:46:16.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Undermining Gender Equality: Female Attrition from Private Law Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Fiona M. Kay ,
Stacey L. Alarie  and
Jones K. Adjei
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The number of women in the legal profession has grown tremendously over the last 40 years, with women now representing about half of all law school graduates. Despite the decades-long pipeline of women into the profession, women's representation among law firm partnerships remains dismally low. One key reason identified for women's minority presence among law firm partners is the high level of attrition of women associates from law firms. This high rate of female attrition undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in the legal profession. Using a survey of 1,270 law graduates, we employ piecewise constant exponential hazard regression models to explore gendered career paths from private law practice. Our analysis reveals that, for both men and women, the time leading up to partnership decisions sees many lawyers exit private practice, but women continue to leave private practice long after partnership decisions are made. Gender differences in leaving private practice also surface with reference to cohorts, areas of law, billable hours, firm sizes, and career gaps. Notably, working in criminal law augmented women's risk of leaving private practice, but not for men, while taking time away from practice for reasons other than parental leaves, hastens both men's and women's exits from private practice.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 766 - 801
Copyright
© 2016 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This study was funded by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and with the cooperation of the Law Society of Upper Canada. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The authors would like to thank the Law & Society Review editors, the anonymous reviewers, and Carole Silver for careful and insightful feedback on this research. The opinions contained in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

References

Ackroyd, Stephen & Muzio, Daniel (2007) “The Reconstructed Professional Firm: Explaining Change in English Legal Practices,” 20 Organization Studies 05, 729–47.Google Scholar
Albert, Amanda J. (2006) “The Use of MacKinnon's Dominance Feminism to Evaluate and Effectuate the Advancement of Women Lawyers as Leaders within Large Law Firms,” 35 Hofstra Law Rev. 291–325.Google Scholar
American Bar Association (2012) Lawyer Demographics. Available at: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/marketresearch/PublicDocuments/lawyer_demographics_2012_revised.authcheckdam.pdf (accessed 28 December 2015).Google Scholar
Armstrong, Deborah J., et al. (2007) “Advancement, Voluntary Turnover and Women in IT: A Cognitive Study of Work-Family Conflict,” 44 Information and Management 142–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arranz, José M., García-Serrano, Carlos, & Toharia, Luis (2010) “The Influence of Temporary Employment on Unemployment Exits in a Competing Risks Framework,” 31 J. of Labor Research 67–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arun, Shoba V., Arun, Thankon G., & Borooah, Vani K. (2004) “The Effect of Career Breaks on the Working Lives of Women,” 10 Feminist Economics 1, 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bardo, Anthony R. & Yamashita, Takashi (2014) “Validity of Domain Satisfaction across Cohorts in the US,” 117 Social Indicators Research 367–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S., ed. (1990) Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, 3rd ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Belkin, Lisa (2003) “The Opt-Out Revolution.” The New York Times Magazine, 26 October. 42–7, 85–6.Google Scholar
Benson, John & Brown, Michelle (2007) “Knowledge Workers: What Keeps Them Committed; What Turns Them Away,” 21 Work, Employment and Society 1, 121–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, Golsch, Katrin, & Rohwer, Götz (2007) Event History Analysis with Stata. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blossfeld, Hans-Peter & Rohwer, Götz, eds. (2001) Event History Analysis. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Borghans, Lex & Golsteyn, Bart H. H. (2007) “Skill Transferability, Regret and Mobility,” 39 Applied Economics 1663–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brockman, Joan (1994) “Leaving the Practice of Law: The Wherefores and the Whys,” 32 Alberta Law Rev. 1, 116–80.Google Scholar
Budig, Michelle J. & Hodges, Melissa J. (2014) “Statistical Models and Empirical Evidence for Differences in the Motherhood Penalty across the Earnings Distribution,” 79 American Sociological Rev. 2, 358–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleves, Mario A., et al. (2010) An Introduction to Survival Analysis Using Stata. College Station: Stata Press.Google Scholar
Couch, Kenneth A. & Fairlie, Robert (2010) “Last Hired, First Fired? Black-White Unemployment and the Business Cycle,” 47 Demography 1, 227–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dau-Schmidt, Kenneth G., et al. (2009) “Men and Women of the Bar: An Empirical Study of the Impact of Gender on Legal Careers,” 16 Michigan J. of Gender and Law 1, 49–145.Google Scholar
De Lange, Annet H., De Witte, Hans, & Notelaers, Guy (2008) “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Examining Longitudinal Relations among Job Resources and Work Engagement for Stayers versus Movers,” 22 Work & Stress 3, 201–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dinovitzer, Ronit (2015) Law and Beyond: A National Study of Canadian Law Graduates. Available at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/dinovitzer/images/LABReport.pdf (accessed 29 December 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dinovitzer, Ronit & Garth, Bryant G. (2015) “Lawyers in the Legal Profession,” in Austin, Sarat & Ewick, Patrick, eds., Wiley Handbook of Law and Society. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dinovitzer, Ronit & Hagan, John (2014) “Hierarchical Structure and Gender Dissimilarity in American Legal Labor Markets,” 92 Social Forces 3, 929–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dinovitzer, Ronit, et al. (2009) After the JD II: Second Results from a National Study of Legal Careers. Chicago: The American Bar Foundation and the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education.Google Scholar
Dobrev, Stanislav D. (2005) “Career Mobility and Job Flocking.” 34 Social Science Research 4, 800–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovon, Kathleen (1990) “Women Associates’ Advancement to Partner Status in Private Firms,” 4 Georgetown J. of Legal Ethics 135–52.Google Scholar
Epstein, Cynthia F. (1997) “The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century,” 34 Society 4, 88–9.Google Scholar
Federation of Law Societies of Canada (2014) 2013 Statistical Report. Available at: http://docs.flsc.ca/STATS2013ReportFINAL.pdf (accessed 28 December 2015).Google Scholar
Forrier, Anneleen, Sels, Luc, & Synen, Dave (2009) “Career Mobility at the Intersection between Agent and Structure: A Conceptual Model,” 82 J. of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 4, 739–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furlong, Jordan (2013) “Why Women Leave Law Firms, and When They'll Return.” Law 21, 28 February. Available at: http://www.law21.ca/2013/02/why-women-leave-law-firms-and-when-theyll-return/ (accessed 21 April 2014).Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc & Henderson, William (2008) “The Elastic Tournament: A Second Transformation of the Big Law Firm,” 60 Stanford Law Rev. 1867–930.Google Scholar
Gorman, Elizabeth H. (2006) “Work Uncertainty and the Promotion of Professional Women: The Case of Law Firm Partnership,” 85 Social Forces 2, 865–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyimah, Stephen Obeng (2007) “What Has Faith Got to Do with It? Religion and Child Survival in Ghana,” 39 J. of Biosocial Science 6, 923–37.Google Scholar
Hirshman, Linda R. (2006) Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Houle, Jason N. (2014) “A Generation Indepted: Young Adult Debt across Three Cohorts,” 61 Social Problems 3, 448–65.Google Scholar
Hull, Kathleen E. & Nelson, Robert L. (2000) “Assimilation, Choice or Constraint? Testing Theories of Gender Differences in the Careers of Lawyers,” 79 Social Forces 1, 229–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kacmar, K. Michele, et al. (2006) “Sure Everyone Can Be Replaced … But at What Cost? Turnover as a Predictor of Unit-Level Performance,” 49 Academy of Management J. 1, 133–44.Google Scholar
Kay, Fiona M. (1997) “Flight from Law: A Competing Risks Model of Departures from Law Firms,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 2, 301–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Fiona M., Alarie, Stacey, & Adjei, Jones (2013) “Leaving Private Practice: How Organizational Context, Time Pressures, and Structural Inflexibilities Shape Departures from Private Law Practice.” 20 Indiana J. of Global Legal Studies 2, 1223–1260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Fiona M. & Gorman, Elizabeth (2008) “Women in the Legal Profession,” 4 Annual Rev. of Law and Social Sciences 299–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Fiona M. & Hagan, John (1999) “Cultivating Clients in the Competition for Partnership: Gender and the Organizational Restructuring of Law Firms in the 1990s,” 33 Law & Society Rev. 3, 517–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Fiona M. & Hagan, John (2003) “Building Trust: Social Capital, Distributive Justice and Loyalty to the Firm,” 28 Law & Social Inquiry 2, 483–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Erin L., et al. (2010) “Gendered Challenge, Gendered Response: Confronting the Ideal Worker Norm in White-Collar Organization,” 24 Gender & Society 3, 281–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klassen, Robert M. & Chiu, Ming Ming (2011) “The Occupational Commitment and Intention to Quit of Practicing and Pre-service Teachers: Influence of Self-efficacy, Job Stress, and Teaching Context,” 36 Contemporary Educational Psychology 114–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolk, Martin (2011) “Deliberate Birth Spacing in Nineteenth Century Northern Sweden,” 27 European J. of Population 337–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law Society of Upper Canada (2011) Retention of Women in Private Practice. Toronto: The Law Society of Upper Canada. Available at: http://www.lsuc.on.ca/media/convmay08_retention_of_women_executive_summary.pdf (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Law Society of Upper Canada (2013) The Changing Face of the Legal Profession: Fact Sheet. Toronto: The Law Society of Upper Canada. Available at: http://www.lsuc.on.ca/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147491913 (accessed 27 December 2015).Google Scholar
Law Society of Upper Canada (2015) Annual Report 2014. Toronto: The Law Society of Upper Canada. Available at: http://www.annualreport.lsuc.on.ca/ (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Law Society of Upper Canada (1992) Annual Report 1991. Toronto: The Law Society of Upper Canada: Available at http://www.annualreport.lsuc.on.ca/ (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Law Society of Upper Canada (2010) Annual Report 2009. Toronto: The Law Society of Upper Canada: Available at http://www.annualreport.lsuc.on.ca/ (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Leicht, Kevin T. & Fennell, Mary L. (2001) Professional Work: A Sociological Perspective. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Liu, Sida (2013) “The Legal Profession as a Social Process: A Theory of Lawyers and Globalization,” 38 Law & Social Inquiry 3, 670–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclean's Magazine (2013) “How Do Canadian Law Schools Compare?” Maclean's Magazine 19 September. Available at: http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/2013-law-school-rankings (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Maclean's Magazine (2014) “Law Schools In Canada: What Will It Cost?” Maclean's Magazine 24 September. Available at: http://www.macleans.ca/education/university/law-school-in-canada-what-will-it-cost/ (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Mallon, Mary & Cohen, Laurie (2001) “Time for a Change? Women's Accounts of the Move from Organizational Careers to Self-Employment,” 12 British J. of Management 3, 217–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGill, Christa (2006) “Educational Debt and Law Student Failure to Enter Public Service Careers: Bringing Empirical Data to Bear,” 31 Law & Social Inquiry 3, 677–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meggiolaro, Silvia (2010) “The Importance of Sexuality in the Outcomes of Dating Partnership among Young Adults,” 15 Advances in Life Course Research 41–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menkel-Meadow, Carrie (1989) “Exploring a Research Agenda of the Feminization of the Legal Profession: Theories of Gender and Social Change,” 14 Law & Social Inquiry 2, 289–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Melinda (2011) Introducing Survival and Event History Analysis. London, UK: Sage Publications Ltd. [Patternmatch]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moen, Phyllis & Huang, Qinlei (2010) “Customizing Careers by Option Out of Shifting Jobs: Dual-Earners Seeking Life-Course ‘Fit’,” in Christensen, K. & Schneider, B., eds., Workplace Flexibility: Realigning 20th Century Jobs to 21st Century Workers. New York: Cornell University Press, 73–94.Google Scholar
Moen, Phyllis, Kelly, Erin L., & Hill, Rachelle (2011) “Does Enhancing Work-Time Control and Flexibility Reduce Turnover? A Naturally Occurring Experiment,” 58 Social Problems 1, 69–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monahan, John & Swanson, Jeffrey (2009) “Lawyers at Mid-Career: A 20-Year Longitudinal Study of Job and Life Satisfaction,” 6 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 3, 451–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Association of Law Placement (NALP) (2015) Class of 2014 National Summary Report. Washington, DC: NALP. Available at: www.nalp.org/uploads/NationalSummaryChartforSchools2014Class.pdf (accessed 4 May 2016).Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert L. (1988) Partners with Power: The Social Transformation of the Large Law Firm. Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert L., et al. (2014) After the JD, Wave 3: Third Results from a National Study of Legal Careers. Chicago: American Bar Foundation and NALP Foundation for Legal Career Research and Education. Available at: www.americanbarfoundation.org/publication/761 (accessed 29 December 2015).Google Scholar
Noonan, Mary C. & Corcoran, Mary E. (2004) “The Mommy Track and Partnership: Temporary Delay or Dead End?,” 596 ANNALS AAPSS 130–50.Google Scholar
Oxford Seminars (2014) “Canadian Law School Profiles,” Available at: http://www.oxfordseminars.ca/LSAT/lsat.profiles.php (accessed 30 July 2015).Google Scholar
Park, Hyunjoon Park & Sandefur, Gary D. (2003) “Racial/Ethnic Differences in Voluntary and Involuntary Job Mobility among Young Men,” 32 Social Science Research 347–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patton, Paula A. (2005) “Women Lawyers, Their Status, Influence and Retention in the Legal Profession,” 11 William and Mary J. of Women and the Law 2, 173–94.Google Scholar
Pelissier, Bernadette M. M., et al. (2003) “Gender Differences in Outcomes from Prison-based Residential Treatment,” 24 J. of Substance Abuse Treatment 149–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinnington, Ashly H. & Sandberg, Jörgen (2013) “Lawyers’ Professional Careers: Increasing Women's Inclusion in the Partnership of Law Firms,” 20 Gender, Work & Organization 6, 616–31.Google Scholar
Powers, Daniel A. & Yun, Myeong-Su (2009) “Multivariate Decomposition for Hazard Rate Models,” 39 Sociological Methodology 1, 233–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preenan, Paul T. Y., De Pater, Irene E., & van Vianen, Annelies E. (2011) “Managing Voluntary Turnover through Challenging Assignments,” 36 Group and Organizational Management 3, 308–45.Google Scholar
Radl, Jonas (2013) “Labour Market Exit and Social Stratification in Western Europe: The Effects of Social Class and Gender on the Timing of Retirement,” 29 European Sociological Rev. 3, 654–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raskin, Patricia M. (2006) “Women, Work, and Family: Three Studies of Roles and Identity among Working Mothers,” 49 American Behavioral Scientist 1354–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichman, Nancy J. & Sterling, Joyce S. (2002) “Recasting the Brass Ring: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Workplace Opportunities for Women Lawyers,” 29 Capital Univ. Law Rev. 4, 923–77.Google Scholar
Saporta, Ishak & Farjoun, Moshe (2003) “The Relationship between Actual Promotion and Turnover among Professional and Managerial Administrative Occupational Groups,” 30 Work and Occupations 3, 255–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharf, Stephanie (2012) Report of a National Survey of Women's Initiatives: The Strategy, Structure and Scope of Women's Initiatives in Law Firms. Chicago: The NAWL Foundation. [Patternmatch]Google Scholar
Scharf, Stephanie A., Liebenberg, Roberta, & Amalfe, Christine (2014) Report of the Eighth Annual NAWL National Survey of Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms. Chicago: The NAWL Foundation.Google Scholar
Schaufeli, Wilmar B. & Bakker, Arnold B. (2004) “Job Demands, Job Resources, and their Relationship with Burnout and Engagement,” 25 J. of Organizational Behavior 293–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seron, Carroll (1996) The Business of Practicing Law: The Work Lives of Solo and Small-Firm Attorneys. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Spurr, Stephen J. & Sueyoshi, Glenn T. (1994) “Turnover and Promotion of Lawyers: An Inquiry into Gender Differences,” 24 The J. of Human Resources 3, 813–42.Google Scholar
Sterling, Joyce, Dinovitzer, Ronit, & Garth, Bryant (2007) “The Changing Social Role of Urban Law Schools,” 36 Southwestern University Law Rev. 389–432.Google Scholar
Theunissen, Gert, et al. (2011) “Career Sidestep, Wage Setback? The Impact of Different Types of Employment Interruptions on Wages,” 18 Gender, Work and Organization S1, 101–31.Google Scholar
Thiombiano, Bilampoa Gnoumou, LeGrand, Thomas K., & Kobiané, Jean-Françoise (2013) “Effects of Parental Union Dissolution on Child Mortality and Schooling in Burkino Faso,” 29 Demographic Research 797–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tremblay, Diane-Gabrielle (2013) “Can Lawyers Take Parental Leaves and If So, with What Impacts? The Case of Québec,” 25 Employee Responsibilities and Rights J. 3, 177–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Duzer, J. Anthony (2007) “Untangling Access to the Canadian Market for Foreign Legal Consultants and Foreign Law Firms,” 15 Michigan State J. for International Law 697–721.Google Scholar
Wallace, Jean E. (2001) “Explaining Why Lawyers Want to Leave the Practice of Law,” in Van Hoy, J., ed., Legal Professions: Work, Structure and Organization. London, UK: Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
Walsh, Janet (2013) “Gender, the Work-Life Interface and Wellbeing: A Study of Hospital Doctors,” 20 Gender, Work and Organization 4, 439–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilder, Gita Z. (2007) Women in the Legal Profession: Findings from the First Wave of the After the JD Study. Washington, DC: NALP.Google Scholar
Wilkins, David B., Fong, Bryan, & Dinovitzer, Ronit (2015) The Women and Men of Harvard Law School: The Preliminary Results from the HLS Career Study. HLS Center on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2015-6. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/so13/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609499 (accessed 1 September 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Joan C. & Richardson, Veta T. (2010) New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling? The Impact of Law Firm Compensation Systems on Women. The Project for Attorney Retention. Chicago: American Bar Association.Google Scholar