This will come as no surprise to anyone but we believe it’s important to keep pushing it out until there is parity.
The FT write, and here’s the introduction.
Female partners at London law firms typically receive 24 per cent less compensation than their male counterparts, a study has revealed.
A survey commissioned by legal recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa found the average annual compensation for a female law firm partner was £502,841 compared with £667,521 for their male peers.
Law firms are partnerships in which senior lawyers “own” the business and share in the annual profits. Partners at the most elite City firms can earn £1m or more.
The study found that there was a 10 per cent difference in new work being originated by female partners — with female partners responsible for £1.8m of work brought in compared with £2m for their male peers. However, the report suggested the difference in origination of new work was not enough to explain the difference in compensation.
The legal recruiter also found that female partners were concentrated towards the lower end of the remuneration spectrum with 34 per cent of women surveyed earning less than £250,000 compared with 15 per cent of men.
In the higher compensation brackets, 11 per cent of women said they were earning between £500,000 and £999,000 compared with 28 per cent of men. At the very top end of the pay scale, however, an equal 2 per cent of men and women surveyed said their annual compensation was between £2m and £2.99m.
This data highlights that we still have a long way to go before we reach compensation parity for women in law firms
Nick Paleocrassas at Major, Lindsey & Africa Major, Lindsey & Africa questioned 180 people working for 67 law firms — including the top UK and US firms with London offices.
“The legal profession is still catching up. This data highlights that we still have a long way to go before we reach compensation parity for women in law firms,” said Nick Paleocrassas of the legal recruiter’s partner practice group.
He said the results emphasised that there were still fewer female partners and fewer women in senior management positions across the legal profession. “Some women become partners later than men but in fact everyone is becoming partner later nowadays. It might have been that a lawyer would become a partner six, seven or eight years after qualification but that has now shifted to 14 or 15 years post-qualification as law firms all focus on increasing their profitability.” he said.
The study found that 38 per cent of all partners questioned said there was no perceived bias in the way their firms determined compensation. However, a further 38 per cent perceived there was cronyism in determining compensation and 15 per cent suggested there was a gender bias. A further 21 per cent said they perceived there was a bias against partners who had worked their way up the firm compared with lawyers hired from outside. Women are making up an increasing proportion of newly qualified solicitors coming into the profession but in the past there has been concern that too few are making it to partner level
More at https://www.ft.com/content/6f022ee4-02cb-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
