
How Top U.S. Law Firms Get Away with Paying Women Less - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-05/how-america-s-top-law-firms-get-away-with-paying-women-less
======
rayiner
The article omits a key point. Compensation at Chadbourne was based on a point
allocation, which was supposed to be tied to revenue generation. Campbell
alleges that she was awarded less compensation points despite being a top
revenue generator at the firm. Moreover, she was compared unfavorably with men
who brought in less revenue than her but were, essentially, better at playing
up their _potential_ to being in revenue in the future.

~~~
forapurpose
I have a little familiarity with such systems. Revenue generation is defined
not only as the revenue the individual lawyer collects from their clients,
which is relatively straightforward to calculate, but more significantly as
the business the lawyer generates for the firm - by being a 'rainmaker'.
Calculating who gets how much credit for a new client is much harder, and much
more prone to biases both unconscious and intentional.

A lawyer, like an IT professional, has only 2000 hours per year to bill; you
can't increase that number more than marginally. But you can generate far more
billable hours for your firm by bringing in new business; a large corporate
client could keep many lawyers busy for their entire careers. I know of
lawyers who were poor at practicing law but they were highly paid partners and
it was well-earned: They brought in far more than 2000 hours for their firm.

~~~
itsdrewmiller
Isn't this usually still quantified and shared though? I doubt her 2 million
in revenue from the article is just what she personally billed.

~~~
forapurpose
> I doubt her 2 million in revenue from the article is just what she
> personally billed.

I've heard of top lawyers billing $1,000 per hour or more, so $2m is within
reach.

------
tuna-piano
The article doesn't answer the question they pose. If the Women could get paid
more at a different firm, presumably they would switch. Presumably, if a $300k
Woman provides as much value as a $1M man, a different greedy firm will offer
a price between $300k and $1M, and pocket the savings.

Are they suggesting there is collusion between firms to drive Womens salaries
down?

If the women do as good of a job at 1/3 the price, why don't they setup a cut-
rate shop that does the work for 2/3 the price, doubling their compensation
and providing customers a discount?

~~~
jon_richards
A recent study showed that people stick to their biases even if it costs them
monetarily (don't have a link right now). You don't need collusion when there
is widespread bias.

~~~
tomp
Was the study experimental and awarded participants millions of dollars for
acting rationally (i.e. against their biases)?

~~~
stevenwoo
It sounds like every study shows this from this article, but this might be the
most recent one. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146124-we-ignore-
what-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146124-we-ignore-what-doesnt-
fit-with-our-biases-even-if-it-costs-us/)

[http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005684)

------
tudorconstantin
If for the same amount and quality of work the law firms has to pay 40% more
for men, shouldn't they hire women exclusively?

~~~
tuna-piano
Or why don't the women band together and setup their own firm? They can charge
20% less and still earn double.

Discrimination exists, but markets are usually pretty good at squeezing it out
and punishing it.

~~~
evgen
The entirety of human history puts lie to this false assertion, and the
continued necessity of laws to prohibit such behavior shows that nothing has
changed. The market is more than willing to put up with a gross inefficiency
if it reinforces the dominant narrative and market participants have shown
themselves ready to collectively make less if it means that members of
disfavored groups make much, much less.

~~~
skookumchuck
The free market usually fails to discriminate, because people are more greedy
than they are bigots. This is why government help is enlisted to enforce
bigotry - often in the form of required licensing, limiting the number of
people entering a career, etc.

~~~
jacalata
The free market discriminated against black people in the US very effectively,
even after the government attempted to enforce non-discrimination (see
redlining).

~~~
skookumchuck
Jim Crow made discrimination legally mandatory, because greed kept undermining
voluntary discrimination.

See "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" by Woodward.

------
forapurpose
> A 2016 survey of the 350 largest U.S. law firms found female partners on
> average received $659,000 in annual pay. Male partners, meanwhile, averaged
> $949,000, or 44 percent more.

> “Studies find that male lawyers are two to five times more likely to become
> partner than female lawyers,” [Professor Deborah] Rhode [director of
> Stanford Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession] says. “I think a lot
> of women lawyers are fed up.”

For almost 20 years, around half of law school graduates have been women.[0]
At least in IT, part of the problem (certainly not the whole thing) is that
there are few women in the pipeline. What excuse does the legal industry have?

The cite has some other interesting information. For example, "In 2015, white
men represented about 74% of all partners." Remember that white males are only
33% of the U.S. population.

[0] [http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-law-canada-and-
us](http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-law-canada-and-us)

~~~
rayiner
Lawyers have a long shelf life. Peak-career partners probably started law
school more like 30 years ago. The number of women in _new_ partner cohorts is
over 1/3 (similar for new Fortune 500 general counsel).

In my view, you’ve got the causation backwards. Having a 25%-33% chance your
boss or client will be a woman creates the kind of culture necessary to
attract a gender-balanced pipeline. A woman going into law hoping to make
partner is signing up to be in a (large) minority, but the ratio is nothing
like a woman going into tech hoping to become a Senior Engineer faces.

Of course, challenges remain, as shown in this article.

~~~
forapurpose
The link in the GP says that 120 of Fortune 500 general counsels - not the
equivalents of partners but of the heads of firms - are women, which I'm
guessing is a far higher proportion than their major law firm equivalents. I
always assumed that was because there is less discrimination in the Fortune
500 general counsel offices. I know a woman who is an attorney in a U.S.
federal court; a large majority of her co-workers are women; is that because
they face less discrimination than in firms?

(Note that on HN we often have to speculate about the experiences of women;
there are so few here who can talk about it. I expect to find male attorneys
on this thread, but I would be happily surprised if a female attorney appeared
to share an on-the-ground perspective with us.)

It reminds me of Justice Ginsburg (obviously from a different era) who said
she was a judge mostly because, despite her elite law school credentials and
talent, she couldn't get a desirable job in a law firm.

EDIT:

> Having a 25%-33% chance your boss or client will be a woman creates the kind
> of culture necessary to attract a gender-balanced pipeline. A woman going
> into law hoping to make partner is signing up to be in a (large) minority,
> but the ratio is nothing like a woman going into tech hoping to become a
> Senior Engineer faces.

That culture isn't working well (as you said, 'challenges remain'). Per the
link in the GP, over 80% of equity partners are male.

But I agree, it's still nothing like tech.

~~~
heartbreak
On your point about less discrimination in federal courts, I think it’s less
than 30% of federal judges that are women. I don’t know the staff composition.

------
arca_vorago
I know multiple paralegals who are some of the best in the field. Fuck the
female partners, I want more outrage about the suppression of the wages of the
people doing 3/4ths the work but getting 1/10 the pay. For example, I found
out firms were calling other firms to artificially keep paralegal salaries
low.

~~~
heartbreak
If your example is true, the subject paralegals know exactly why they have
standing to sue.

Law firms tend to avoid breaking the law pretty well, though.

~~~
arkis22
This assuming that "standing to sue" is equal to justice, which it isn't

~~~
heartbreak
My real point is that the chances of law firms breaking the law over paralegal
compensation is basically nil. Paralegal salaries make up an itty bitty
fraction of the money that moves around these firms.

~~~
gldhfjcufuffi
Wasn't that the point?

Also, the wage suppression is related to the fact that the paralegals produce
far more value than they are paid, not a legal issue. You might say, hey
that's a common feature of the economy. You'd be right.

~~~
heartbreak
The issue I was discussing was the allegation that firms were calling around
in a wage suppression conspiracy. Like Google/Apple/etc got caught doing.

------
synicalx
So from this story, we now know that:

1\. A woman at a law firm earned less points for _reasons_ and thus got paid
less.

2\. The firm claims this was commensurate with her performance.

3\. She says it was not.

4\. Other women at the same firm disagreed with her.

5\. Therefore all female partners at all law firms in the US are being paid
less? Or is the title of this article just click-bait?

Also in this case, lets not forget she has had six kids. Regardless of how PC
you want to be you cannot possibly argue that this HASN'T had at least SOME
practical impact to her career and ability to perform her in her role. To be
fair, it's probably had a similar impact on her husband as well - kids take up
a lot of your thoughts and time it's totally normal.

~~~
matt4077
> Also in this case, lets not forget she has had six kids

Elon Musk has six kids. What's your point?

~~~
synicalx
He's also been divorced twice, what's your point?

~~~
itsdrewmiller
His point is that the argument about children competing with career priorities
is an argument used almost exclusively against women. As it says in the
article, she has a husband who doesn't work.

~~~
synicalx
It's an argument used "against" women with good reason, I'm sure the stay at
home father in the article wasn't the one carrying the children and giving
birth?

------
mpweiher
"...Two retired women partners at the firm have joined her lawsuit, but a
_larger_ number of current women partners have actually condemned it."

So it's not "law firms vs. women", more women actually support the law firm in
this case. Of course that's not proof of anything, but it does suggest it
could simply be a normal case of people disagreeing about compensation. In
these sorts of cases, you tend to go for any "weapon" you can, and
"discrimination" is a pretty powerful one, even if there's nothing to it.

Of course the stats don't look good, but we all should know that correlation ≠
causation. Jordan Peterson, who apparently works with law firms, gives a very
different reason:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q)

TL;DW: Law firms try their darnedest to keep women, but most women just aren't
as mono-maniacal as the few men who make it to the very top.

------
fgjjgutjvnu
From the article: “It took me a lot longer than it’s supposed to to reach
equity partner,” Campbell says. “Part of that was due to choices I made,
putting a priority on raising my kids, for a lot of years as a single mom.”

So the usual fuss about nothing, looking at meaningless income averages,
neglecting the individual choices and circumstances that actually explain
things.

