Category: News Feeds

Here at Above the Law we care a lot about increasing transparency at Biglaw firms — that’s why we spend so much time reporting on bonuses and salaries and benefits. And while reporting on the market standard and leaders will always be a part of our mission, we also want to hear about what it’s like to actually work in the halls of Biglaw.

So, we’re asking our readers to fill out a brief survey about what they wish they knew about their firm before they started working there. We don’t care about the firm’s PR line, but about what associates really feel about the firm. We’ll be integrating the results of the survey into a new transparency project that’ll be launched later this summer.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

No one had any illusions that sexism was cured. While high-profile abusers are finally facing repercussions for their actions and companies have stepped up efforts to construct policies that head off problems at the source, that’s all pretty cosmetic when it comes to ripping out patriarchy at the root. But still, one would have thought society had advanced a bit further than this.

In defense of the Law Society of New Zealand, its recent adventures in casual sexism contain the seed of its own redemption.

According LawFuel, the Law Society’s 150th Anniversary Commemoration dinner invitation proved a teachable moment for those trying to explain casual sexism. When giving the details of the event, LawFuel gave potential attendees some helpful advice on dress:

Dress: Men: Business attire, Women: Cocktail wear.

Swing and a miss.

It’s unfortunate for the organization too because the invitation also notes that “partners/spouses also welcome” managing to avoid saying, “WAGs welcome” which the invite undoubtedly said in days gone by. But this isn’t the sort of place where someone drops a ball — a human had to type in these words and had to process on some level that all the men are businesspeople coming to network and the women are party guests.

In a game attempt to square this, LawFuel spoke with a woman who offered that the whole thing was “less biased around gender than it may appear if the fashion context is taken into account.”

“To suggest business attire is appropriate for men and cocktail wear for women is two different standards. With that said, however, we also need to bear in mind that the spectrum of fashion for men is much narrower than for women. The mens’ version of “cocktail wear” could very well be said to be a business suit. It could be seen as the male equivalent of cocktail wear. In that context, the invitation seems much less biased around gender.”

In other words, “You see, the fashion world grew up around sexist assumptions about the workplace so parroting that lingo isn’t biased because… reasons.” No, it’s not fine to accept that because the fashion world couldn’t be bothered to change its vocabulary to assume women might be working too that this isn’t a slap in the face of the women who are partners in their firms and have to find some cocktail wear while the rest of the firm gets to come in business attire. If the issue is that the range of options for women is more expansive than for men, then just say everyone should come in cocktail attire and men will be in the same suits.

But, in fact, fashion does have a term for this and it’s “semi-formal” which may mean gaudy Sweet 16 garb for kids, but for adults means exactly what the Law Society is going for.

Do you want people dressed up but not in tuxedos and gowns? Then it’s semi-formal. Done. This shouldn’t be so difficult.

Law Society Goes Off Uncocked: The Cocktail Dress Brouhaha [LawFuel]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

In the latest episode of The Jabot podcast, I talk with Jen Dawson, co-author of What Do Breadwinner Women Lawyers (BWLs) Want? and Managing Director of Hemington WealthManagement. Jen and I discuss the biggest frustrations that women in the legal profession have, tips to improve your financial health, and why women lawyers are so unhappy.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench. It’s a reminder that even when we aren’t winning, we’re still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Wondering how many lawyers actively practice in the United States? I happen to have the answer: 1,352,027. And I can also tell you that a quarter of those lawyers are in just two states, California and New York.

I have these facts at the ready thanks to the new ABA Profile of the Legal Profession, a 100-page compendium of statistics released Saturday during the ABA annual meeting in San Francisco.

The report provides insights on lawyer demographics, earnings, diversity, pro bono service, legal education, use of technology, well-being, and discipline. It pulls together data from sources within the ABA as well as from various outside sources, particularly the National Association for Law Placement.

“This report is an important reference for anyone who wants to understand where the legal profession came from and where it stands today,” ABA President Bob Carlson said.

Ironically, the one set of demographics I’d hoped to see in the report is not there. When I first heard the report would be coming, I had hoped it would provide information on breakdown of lawyers by firm size — how many solos, how many in small firms, etc. But the report has nothing on this.

That aside, there is plenty-enough to provide a wide-ranging overview of the legal profession. Here is some of what it reveals.

Demographics. During the 20th Century, the number of lawyers grew 793 percent, from 114,460 to over a million. Since 2010, the legal profession has grown nearly twice as fast as the nation’s population, at a rate of 12.4 percent compared to 6.3 percent for the general population. The largest increase ever in the number of lawyers happened in the 1970s, when the number of lawyers rose 76 percent, from 326,000 in 1970 to 574,000 in 1980. New York has the largest number of lawyers, 182,296, followed by California at 170,117. But the highest per-capita concentration of lawyers is in our nation’s capital, where there is one lawyer for every 13 residents.

Gender. While the number of female attorneys has grown over the last decade, male attorneys still outnumber female attorneys by 2-1 (64 percent male to 36 percent female). But compared to 50 years ago, we have made progress. From 1950 to 1970, only 3 percent of all lawyers were women. The percentage has edged up gradually since then — 8 percent in 1980, 20 percent in 1991, 27 percent in 2000, and 36 percent today. Today, one out of three law school deans is a woman, compared to 1-in-10 in 2000. Among law students, women outnumbered men for the first time in 2014 and the gap has continued to grow ever since, with women law students consistently outnumbering males. Across all sectors of the legal profession, women lawyers earn less than men.

Race and ethnicity. Only 15 percent of lawyers are racial or ethnic minorities — and that number has risen by only three percentage points in the last 10 years. Nearly all minorities are underrepresented in the legal profession compared with their representation in the U.S. population: 5 percent of lawyers are African American, while the U.S. population is 13.4 percent African American; 5 percent of lawyers are Hispanic, while the U.S. population is 18.1 percent Hispanic; and 2 percent of lawyers are Asian, while the U.S. population is 5.8 percent Asian. Only Native Americans, at 1 percent of lawyers, are represented at about the same proportion as their general population numbers. At law firms, the number of minority partners has increased only slightly over the last decade, from 6 percent in 2009 to 9 percent in 2018. At law schools, minority enrollment has gradually risen, from 25 percent of law students in 2011 to 31 percent in 2018.

Lawyers with disabilities. Roughly 0.5 percent of lawyers report have disabilities, a number that, while small, has doubled over the last decade. That is about the same number of law firm partners who report having disabilities.

LGBT lawyers. No reliable numbers exist on the total number of LGBT lawyers in all parts of the legal profession, the report says. However, the annual survey conducted by NALP put the percentage at 2.86 percent, up from 2.48 percent two years earlier. The NALP survey also found that the number of LGBT law firm partners had risen from 1.4 percent in 2009 to 2.11 percent today.

Earnings. The average lawyer earns a salary of $144,230. And while lawyer salaries continue to grow, they do so at less than the rate of inflation. The fastest growth ever in lawyer pay occurred from 1997-2002, when the average went from $72,840 to $105,890. The highest average salaries are in California and the lowest are in Puerto Rico, while the midpoint can be found in Salisbury, Md., where the average pay is $109,580.

Law schools. Law school applications are up in recent years. In 2018, 60,700 people applied to law school, of which 44,000 were accepted. The peak was 2004, when more than 100,000 people applied. When they graduate, nearly half of new lawyers take jobs at law firms, while 12 percent go to government jobs and 1 percent start solo practices. Law students graduated with average debt of $145,500, compared to $82,400 in 2000.

Pro bono. Fifty-two percent of lawyers provide free services for clients who cannot afford to hire an attorney. Of those, the average attorney provided 37 hours of pro bono time. Only 20 percent of lawyers meet the ABA’s aspirational goal of providing at least 50 hours a year of pro bono service.

Technology. One in four lawyers say their law firm has experienced a computer security breach, but only one in three law firms has cyber liability insurance. Viruses, spyware, and malware are fairly common, which 40 percent of lawyers saying their firm had been infected at some point. The most popular social networks among lawyers are LinkedIn (82 percent), Facebook (47 percent), Avvo (27 percent), Twitter (25 percent), Martindale (15 percent), and Google Plus (7 percent).

Lawyer well-being. Among lawyers, 21 percent are problem drinkers — a rate that is triple that of the general population and double that of other highly educated populations. Twenty-eight percent of lawyers struggle with depression and 19 percent have symptoms of anxiety.

The full report is available online at www.americanbar.org/profile.

Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

I felt like a hillbilly, because I had this huge gap between my teeth. When I got to college, I realized it was a big part of who I was and, along with my red hair, really made me stand out.

— Madison Krause, a first-year student at New York Law School, telling the world about the gap between her two front teeth in an interview with The Daily Beast related to actress Dakota Johnson, who used to have a gap between her two front teeth as well. Krause’s mother said the space in her teeth would build “character,” and she works as a beauty and fashion influencer when she’s not busy studying law. You can check out her out on Instagram @GapToothGinger.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Are you caught up on the wild scandal swirling around Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay? If you haven’t, I’ll give you a minute to catch up — I’ll wait. Anyway, Hay is currently suspended from teaching at Harvard after he got embroiled with two women, Maria-Pia Shuman and Mischa Haider. Hay claims he was picked up by Shuman and that relationship — while he was still married to Jennifer Zacks — led to a paternity kerfuffle, confrontations with Shuman and Haider that led to the police being called, and Hay even says Shuman and Haider orchestrated a complex scheme where they moved his family’s stuff out of their house, created fake lease documents, and moved into the house themselves.

Now New York Magazine has a follow-up to that story where they’ve identified six other men who had strange interactions with a Frenchwoman they believe was Shuman, that reveal a pattern. According to the article, Shuman made a habit of trying to come on to men around the Harvard Law campus using the same pickup line that got Hay:

On Friday, April 17, 2015, a third-year Harvard Law School student named Jordan, who asked that we not use his last name, was walking down Massachusetts Avenue near the law school’s Wasserstein Hall late in the afternoon. (Shuman’s apartment was across the street from HLS.) Jordan says he was bound for the T to Boston to meet up with friends and see comedian Hannibal Buress perform when Shuman’s delivery of the “attractive” line caught him off guard. He said, “Thank you, I have a girlfriend” — which was true — and continued walking, only to find that she was following him, wanting to continue the conversation. She said, “I’m attached, too. Here’s my number if you change your mind.” She said she was only going to be in town for a few weeks, if he wanted to get together — no strings attached. Jordan brushed her off with another polite thank-you and continued on, even as she asked if he had somewhere to be. He says he was surprised by her persistence and told her, “Yes, I do,” and headed for the train. When he got to Boston, he immediately called a friend about the encounter. The friend confirmed their conversation to me via email, recalling it because it was so strange and, in part, because she was French and the friend and Jordan have a passion for Richard Linklater’s films about an American man’s longtime love affair with a Frenchwoman.

Other men that spoke with New York describe similar pickup stories. One additional law student even described a similar paternity story where Shuman claimed he was the father of her son, the same as she did with Hay. Though it should be noted none of the other tales that were dug up are nearly as intricate as Hay’s.

There’s also some background provided by friends of Shuman that tries to shed some light on why she and Haider do what they are alleged to do:

In fact, the friend says, Shuman always had a serious boyfriend. But it wasn’t until she met Haider that she became obsessed with men. “She changed when they became friends. I noticed in the last couple of years of knowing her that there was a serious preoccupation with men. I don’t know why — she had nice boyfriends, long-term relationships, and she was now suddenly single and she was out there trying to meet up with a lot of guys, with a use-them-and-abuse-them kind of feel to it,” says the friend. “She had never been like that before. I assumed it was like she was young, free, and single. She and Mischa were both very obsessed, something about going out and picking up men and finding hot men and wanting to hook up with men. It was just off.” After reading the New York story, the friend was reminded of one of their last conversations. “I remember she said, ‘I love corrupting these really Waspy Bostonian guys.’ The impression I got was, if she picked up a guy, told him he was really hot, went back and slept with him and then discarded him, she felt like, ‘I’m in control, I’m so powerful, I used him, I tossed him aside.’ She liked the idea of corrupting what looked like these innocent, nice guys.”

Looks like Hay was perfectly positioned to get caught up in Shuman’s games.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).