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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
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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.

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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.

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