Women Lawyers Rival Men In Number, Lag In Opportunity

Though women make up nearly half the population of American law schools, they are disproportionately clustered in lower-ranked schools, directly impacting their professional advancement, according to a new study. The report, called, “The Leaky Pipeline for Women Entering the Legal Profession,” found that women hold fewer than 20 percent of partnerships at law firms and are underrepresented in the higher echelons of law, including among judges, corporate counsel, law school deans, and professors. Though women earn 57 percent of college degrees, they account for just under 51 percent of law school applicants. The gender gap widens at upper-echelon law programs: top-tier schools, in the 2015-16 academic year, enrolled just over 47 percent of women as students, compared to 53.5 percent at lower-ranked or unranked law schools.  One reason for the gender gap: higher-ranked law schools stress LSAT scores in admissions, and women on average score two points lower than men on that test. Woman “are less likely than men to attend the schools that send high percentage of graduates into the profession,” Deborah J. Merritt, Ohio State University law professor and co-author of the study, told the New York Times. That means women “start at a disadvantage” which can impair the rest of their careers.