Bloomberg Article: Are We on The Brink of a Female ‘Exodus’ from Big Law?

Will the pandemic spawn a major female brain drain in law? Or is that just a lot of hooey?

For months, I was in denial. That’s because I’ve been hearing that the pandemic hasn’t been that bad for women at all.

“Zoom has been an equalizer,” says Suong Nguyen, a partner at Quinn Emanuel in Silicon Valley, about participating in remote hearings and mediations. “Now everyone has a seat ‘at the table’ because we all have the same space on Zoom.” Plus, adds Nguyen, “Zoom has been great for business development—and I can have lunch with my daughter!” Another advantage, say female lawyers, is that male bonding events like golf outings, cigar bar junkets, and football games have been sidelined during the pandemic. “Now, men are stuck like me working,” says a female lawyer at a bank.

Alas, these women might not be representative of the whole female experience during Covid-19. According to a new study by the American Bar Association (“Practicing Law in the Pandemic and Moving Forward”), which surveyed 4,200 ABA members (54% men and 43% women) from September 30 to October 11, 2020, the pandemic has been no friend to female lawyers. Though Big Law lawyers have generally worked like dogs during Covid and suffered stress as a result, women have had a far worse time. The ABA study finds that women are going bonkers trying to juggle family and work, so much so that many are thinking of downsizing their careers or dropping out entirely.

“It is clear that the ‘she-cession’ is occurring in the legal industry,” says Katherine Helm, a New York-based partner at Dechert who has three school-age kids. “I have seen both female associates and partners quit outright or downgrade their careers over the past year,” noting the struggles that women with young kids have. She calls the supposed “benefits” of the pandemic “toxic positivity,” that’s “not particularly helpful to boosting morale or encouraging women to stay in legal practice during these trying times.” The reality, she adds, is that “the gender effects in the legal profession appear to be on par with other working class industries.”

Unfortunately, she might be right. The ABA study amplifies the ominous findings inMcKinsey/LeanIn 2020 report on women in the workplace, which reports that 25% of women in the workforce “are contemplating what many would have considered unthinkable [before the onset of the pandemic]: downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce completely.” And for women with children, that number is one in three. What’s worse, the McKinsey/LeanIn report concludes that women could be set back by half a decade, resulting in “far fewer women in leadership—and far fewer women on track to be future leaders. All the progress we’ve seen over the past six years could be erased.”

That dire warning might be already playing out in Big Law. The ABA report finds that more than a third (35%) of women are thinking of going part-time, an uptick from previous years. And the hardest hit group are women who represent the next wave of law firm partners: Those with younger kids. The report finds that 53% of women with children age five or younger and 41% of women with children age six to 13 are thinking about going part-time. More alarming, 37% of women are considering quitting entirely because of the pandemic.

“They are typically women who are five to 15 years out of law school who are enormously profitable for law firms,” says Stephanie Scharf, a co-author of the ABA report, about those who are most likely to downsize their careers. A partner at Scharf Banks Marmor and a principal of consulting firm The Red Bee Group, Scharf adds, “the 24/7 culture, the continuing pressure during Covid in which firms act as if it’s business as usual, is causing some with babies to think, I don’t want to stay here.”

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