JD Journal » female partners

Survey Shows Women Partners Are On The Increase

joshua — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:40:55 +0000

A survey released Monday by Project for Attorney Retention shows law firms have “made significant advances in retaining and promoting their women lawyers” during the last year. According to the survey, 34 percent of new partners this year have been female, which is up from 28 percent in 2009.

Of the 118 law firms taking part in the study, 23 had new partner classes that were at least 50 percent female. Topping that list were Sullivan and Cromwell, Munger Tolles and Weil Gotshal, each of which have had partner classes that’s 100 percent female.

On the flip side, 14 firms that have made at least two new partners this year have yet to promote a female.

Cynthia Thomas, director of research at PAR, commented on the survey’s findings in a press release.

“The increase in the number of women promoted to partner is heartening,” Thomas said. “But two factors indicate that celebration would be premature: first, the overall number of women partners in law firms remains low, at approximately 19 percent, and second, this survey made no distinction between equity and non-equity partnership, and other studies have shown that an even lower percentage of equity partners are female.”

The Project for Attorney Retention is a nonprofit organization that studies the advancement of women lawyers and work/life issues for all lawyers. It is headquartered at UC Hastings College of the Law.

Rogers & Hardin Promotes Lori Gelchion to Partner

joshua — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:00:14 +0000

Atlanta’s Rogers & Hardin has a new partner. Lori Gelchion, a corporate lawyer with a practice focusing on Mergers and Acquisitions and securities law has been made a partner. Gelchion received her JD from the University of Georgia Law School, where she was on the editorial board of the law review.

Rogers & Hardin was founded in 1976 in Atlanta, Georgia, and has an international practice with clients around the country and the world.

Five of Nine New Partners at WilmerHale are Women

joshua — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:37:09 +0000

WilmerHale announced its new partnership class this week. Nine associates have been promoted to partner and of those, five are female. Three new partners were promoted in Washington DC and three in New York, with two more coming in Boston and the last one in London.

Last year WilmerHale promoted ten partners, four of whom were women. Wilmer’s assistant managing partner, Carol Clayton, says it’s a reflection of the firm’s effort to hire and promote women and that she hopes that it’s the beginning of a trend.

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP has twelve offices across the US, Europe and Asia. It was created in 2004 through the merger of the Boston’s Hale & Dorr and the Washington’s Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, and employs more than 1,100 attorneys worldwide. As of 2008, it was the 23rd largest law firm in the world in terms of revenue

Good News/Bad News for Women in BigLaw

joshua — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:12:07 +0000

The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) has released its fourth annual National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms and the results are a mixed bag. On the up side, the compensation gap between male and female lawyers has shrunk, particularly among equity partners. On the down side, women continue to be extremely under represented on governing committees and on the list of managing partners. This year for the first time the survey also looked at revenue generation and found that women are also under represented on the lists of top rainmakers.

Last week Sullivan & Cromwell promoted five new partners, four of whom are women. The firm said policies aimed at recruitment and retention of female attorneys, such as maternity leave and flex time, were responsible for the growth in female partners.

New Partner Class at Sullivan & Cromwell

joshua — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:59:48 +0000

Sullivan & Cromwell announced its latest class of partners and four of the five promotions are women. The firm highlighted family friendly policies like flex time and maternity leave, which are aimed at recruiting and retaining more female lawyers. Three of the five promotions came in the area of corporate law which could be a sign of the firm’s belief that the worst of the economic slump is behind us.

The new partners are Whitney Chatterjee, Marion Leydier, Sarah Payne, Zena Yoslov, and S. Eric Wang.

Sullivan & Cromwell has approximately 700 lawyers in 12 offices, located in financial centers in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.

Report: Women Still Not Making Partner

Erik Even — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:48:42 +0000

According to a report released by the San Francisco-based Project for Attorney Retention, which surveyed 100 American law firms, only 23 of those firms had partnership classes consisting of at least 40% women in 2008.

Fourteen of the 100 firms did not include any women.

The survey included 100 law firms, which were chosen based on prior years’ surveys, firm size, reputation, and availability of information.

From the report:

The best: Cravath (67%), Dickstein Shapiro (67%), Wiley Rein (60%), Andrews Kurth (57%), Bryan Cave (56%), Arent Fox (50%), Baker & Daniels (50%), Hogan & Hartson (50%), Holland and Hart (50%), King & Spalding (50%), Luce Forward (50%), Simpson Thacher (50%), and Sullivan & Cromwell (50%). A special mention goes to Farella Braun, whose only new partner is female (100%).

The worst: None of the following firms made a female partner this year: Cadwalader, Cleary Gottlieb, Dechert, Foley Hoag, Kaye Scholer, Lowenstein Sandler, Milbank, Schulte Roth, Steptoe, Strook, Venable, Wachtell, White & Case, and Wilkie Farr.

PAR is an initiative of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Mentoring Program for Female Lawyers Redresses Discrimination

Erik Even — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:25:41 +0000

Hope you’re interested in Canada this morning. Canada.com has a story about the frustrations faced by female lawyers, and a new women’s professional mentoring program in Calgary.

Patricia McLeod bumped up against the invisible wall between female and male lawyers as a young articling student at a Vancouver law firm.

Male students were more frequently invited to football games by the firm’s partners, most of whom were men. More frustrating, when the men played on the company hockey team “the guys would get passed files in the locker-room,” says McLeod. Rubbing shoulders with partners and getting as many billable hours as possible could mean the difference between being kept on at the end of the year or not, she explains.

But when women at the firm decided to start holding get togethers of their own, “there was a huge objection to our ‘hen parties,’” says the 40-year-old…

“We were told we should join the hockey team.”

The Lilith Law Professional Development and Mentoring program launched in Calgary last week and is the first of its kind in Canada.

Patricia Blocksom, a senior partner with Dunphy Best Blocksom; Valerie Prather, a partner with Bennett Jones; and Ronnalee McMahon, a mentoring expert with Action Circle Consulting; all decided it was time to help younger female lawyers learn to navigate what Blocksom calls “the systemic barriers against women in the profession.”

Ten proteges are paired with 10 mentors. Proteges are usually associate lawyers who’ve been at a firm for three to five years but haven’t yet “made partner.” Mentors are typically senior lawyers, some partners with a financial stake in their firms.

In the formalized six-month program, proteges and mentors meet once a month for up to two hours. Contracts guaranteeing confidentiality are signed and goals are set. The entire group also gathers once a month for professional development sessions that feature guest speakers.

Via Canada.com.

Gibbons Wins Catalyst Award for Women’s Initiative

Erik Even — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:43:14 +0000

Newark, New Jersey’s Gibbons PC, a 230-attorney firm specializing in litigation, has been named one of the winners of the 2009 Catalyst Award.

Catalyst is a nonprofit organization working globally with businesses and the professions to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women and business. Catalyst annually honors exemplary organizational initiatives that promote women’s advancement with the Catalyst Award.

Gibbons’ initiative, The Women’s Initiative: Driving Success Through Diversity Investment, supports a workplace culture that is flexible, innovative, engaging, and inclusive. It is embedded in the firm’s business development strategy and has become critical to its branding in the marketplace.

In 2007, The Women’s Initiative generated more than 6% of the firm’s annual revenue. Women currently hold 21.1% of equity director positions, and the number of women directors overall increased from 13% in 1997 to 19% in 2008. Women of color directors increased from zero to 4.1% in the same time frame. Women also chair three of the firm’s nine practice groups.

Gibbons is a top law firm in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Delaware metropolitan regions and is ranked among the Am Law 200. The firm provides transactional, litigation, and counseling services to leading businesses nationwide. The firm was recently ranked one of the top 50 firms nationwide for working women by Working Mother magazine, and among the top 100 firms in the nation for diversity by Multi-Cultural Law magazine.

Female Partners in DC Firms Take More Part-Time Hours Than Men

Erik Even — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:10:07 +0000

An interesting story at the DC Examiner, about the results of a study from the National Association for Law Placement:

Female partners in DC law firms are taking part-time hours at nearly three times the rate that men are, a new study has found.There are nearly 6,000 partners in 131 big law firm offices in Washington, the nation’s second-largest law market. Less than 5 percent of the partners are part-timers, but women make up nearly three-quarters of the part-time ranks...

Less than 2 percent of New York partners are working part time and of those, about two-thirds are women…

The study suggests that women, even big time professional women laywers, still do the bulk of family care. Fourteen percent of all US workers hold part-time positions, including in the professions of engineering, architecture and medicine.

But lawyers make their money from billable hours, and its almost impossible to make partner if you’re not working every hour you can.

Read the original story.