Sex Discrimination in Large Law Firms
Sex discrimination results in unequal pay for female partners at the large firms. Vivian Chen, author of the Careerist, reports that Temple University and the University of Texas-Pan American completed a comprehensive study of female partner compensation at the 200 largest law firms. The study covered compensation from 2002 to 2007. The conclusion: Female partners are paid less then male partners on average. The study found that the pay disparity is "attributed to discriminatory practices under both disparate treatment and disparate impact analysis." Women partners at the largest law firms, in other words, get hosed.
Ironically, lawyers are key players in the war against discrimination. The goal of our employment laws is to stop discrimination in the work place. But if we lawyers are shown to discriminate against our own, how can we be trusted to eradicate employment discrimination? That would be like hiring ex-cons to police the streets.
But do people really expect lawyers at the top 200 law firms to protect society? Do people expect more from lawyers than others? No.
The huge law firms are not driven by social causes. In fact, most law firms today, regardless of size, are run like businesses. Some smaller firms are motivated by social causes, but they are rare. Law firms today are enterprises designed to generate money for their owners. So there is no reason to expect that law firms would be any different than a bank or an insurance company and therefore employment discrimination will exist in these enterprises just as it exists elsewhere.
There is a problem here. Law is what governs human behavior. If lawyers apply the law then more should be expected of them. They should not be discriminating against each other. They should be examples of better conduct. But today this is just an illusion. Lawyers on a whole are not seen as examples of model behavior. Instead, they are seen driving BMWs. Atticus Finch represents how a lawyer should be. But he was a fictional character. If people like that still exist, they would find it hard to succeed as a partner in a modern top 200 law firm. They would be unable to take time off to defend a poor African American man accused of rape. But if Mr. Finch was a partner in a top 200 law firm, he would probably make sure that his female colleagues were paid equally.
