Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Lawyers Radcliffe Institute Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University President-elect While a cheering crowd of 500 filled a theater space in Cambridge today to hear the five female Ivy League Presidents discuss women and leadership, the Boston Globe front page told us that female lawyers are dropping out of law firms in alarming numbers, drying up any pipeline to leadership in business, justice system, politics, academia...you name it. From the Globe: Of the 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers who provided data for the report, 31 percent of female associates had left private practice entirely, compared with 18 percent of male associates. The gap widens among associates with children, to 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively -- reflecting the cultural reality that women remain the primary care givers of children and are therefore more likely to leave their firms for family reasons. The dropout rate among women lawyers is overwhelmingly the result of the combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers' career trajectories may alternate between work and family, the report found. The report, "Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership," which was produced by the MIT Workplace Center in conjunction with several of the state's major bar associations, is rife with devastating commentaries on law firm life, including one female lawyer's remark that "I would not encourage my daughters to enter the legal profession." -RH   9:03:53 PM    comment []

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