A Balancing of the Bar : Women in Law Find Profession Is Still Tilted in Favor of Men

For women lawyers, all the trials aren’t occur ring in courtrooms.

A decade or so after women began entering the profession in numbers, women lawyers in many major cities, including Los Angeles, believe they are paid as much as their male colleagues.

But a majority complain that they continue to experience sexual harassment--ranging from leers to rapes--in the workplace.

An overwhelming majority of the female professionals still feel frustrated by the traditional old boys’ network, including all-male clubs.

And most, despite their six-figure salaries and other perks, find the demands of the profession incompatible with a personal life or child-rearing.

These were some of the findings of a recently released national survey of 918 female lawyers in 56 of the largest law firms in 13 cities, 10% of the respondents in Los Angeles.

“We felt that women at the large firms seemed to be among the best, brightest and wealthiest women in the profession,” said Doreen Weisenhaus, editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal, which, with West Publishing Co. of Minneapolis, conducted the study in October and November.

“If anyone in this field would have a chance to succeed, it would be these women,” Weisenhaus explained. But, she added, “we found that they had their share of problems.”

The survey--which reached many of the same conclusions as another recent study by a unit of the California Bar Assn.--had one relatively bright spot for women lawyers in Southern California.

It found that, compared with women lawyers in Boston (which fared lowest in all categories) or Chicago, “there are a lot of happy people in L.A,” Weisenhaus said.

Indeed, law firms in Los Angeles and in Washington scored better on equal opportunities for women--in management, promotions, job assignments--than did those in any of the surveyed cities, which included Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco and Tampa.

Salary was not an issue. Fully a third of the respondents nationwide earned more than $100,000 a year; more than three-fourths thought salaries and bonuses were on a par with those of male lawyers in their firms.

It is a sign of the times that 66% of the women surveyed have been in law for seven years or less and 62% are under 34. Elaine Weiss, a lawyer who is staff director of the American Bar Assn.’s Commission on Women in the Profession, points out that, in 1970, women were only 3%-4% of all the nation’s lawyers. Today, 20% of an estimated total of 700,000 are women.

But what many of the women are saying now is that the law is all-consuming: 77% said they had sacrificed outside interests and 82% said they had sacrificed time with their families.

It is little wonder, considering that the minimum expected billing time, about 2,000 hours each year in big firms in big cities, represents only part of the time a lawyer works. Other responsibilities, including meetings and administrative tasks, can increase the hours by 20%.

While confronting a crushing professional workload, women have family concerns to deal with, too. And 42% of the women surveyed nationally said they had delayed having children to further their careers. Although 62% are married, only 32% have children in the household.

Although 75% said their firms offered flextime or part-time work--scheduling options that constitute what some have dubbed a “mommy track”--90% said that following this arrangement would be a serious impediment to advancement toward partnership.

The 60% who said they had been targets of unwanted sexual attention said it came equally from male supervisors, colleagues and clients; a quarter of the women said they had been touched, leaned over, cornered or pinched; 13 women reported attempts at or actual rapes and assaults. But only 7% reported the incidents.

That women feel some frustration and anger over their careers was evidenced by the detailed, unsolicited comments they offered with survey responses.

“My interests have become so narrow it is difficult to relate to new acquaintances and people in other fields,” a law firm associate in Miami-Tampa wrote. A Washingtonian said she had made so many compromises in her personal life that, on being named a partner recently, “My primary reaction is to feel resentful.”

Others cited strains on their marriages, inability to conceive and regret at postponing motherhood, unbearable stress, long hours required to meet billable hour requirements and fatigue.

Even though 83% of the law firms have written policies permitting paid maternity or parental leaves (typically between six weeks and three months), almost half the women said that associates who take the time risk their career advancement; only 20% felt that a man opting for parental leave would not hurt his career.

Although women today are half of all law school graduates, 60% of the respondents reported that, in job interviews, they had been asked such inappropriate questions as their marriage plans, whether they planned children, how their mates felt about their careers, how they would handle child care and whether they used birth control.

The absence of male mentors was often cited as a professional stumbling block; more than half the women said male supervisors were less willing or unwilling to mentor women.

As for the old “dress for success” image--no-nonsense man-tailored suit, floppy tie, short hair--it appears to be out; only 32% of the women said they adhere to the traditional dress rules. Expensive, not conservative, seems to be the idea now. Women said they refuse to dress like “short men in skirts” or “prison matrons.”

Some, still a minority, said they keep fresh flowers and family photos in their offices.

Summing up, the respondents said law firms need to recognize human needs of all their employees, men and women, and address the problems of working mothers. Suggestions included sabbaticals that would allow women to return to work full-time when their children are older and provision of both emergency child care and on-site child care.

Both men and women need time for personal growth, they suggested.

Are surveys such as this, and the recent study by the California Bar’s Committee on Women in the Law, merely preaching to the converted? Or can they make a difference?

“I think they are good,” said Harry L. Hathaway, a senior partner at the firm of Hill, Farrer and Burrill and this year’s president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. “It does tend to sensitize us to the problem.”

Just last week, he noted, the county Bar’s “jurist of the year,” Superior Court Judge Robert Weil, said in accepting the honor that he hoped lawyers would do one thing: Remove gender bias from the court.

Hathaway said, “California, I think, is ahead of the rest of the country in terms of integration of women and minorities into the profession, both of which we have not done very well with. I think the statistics are embarrassing and miserable.

“I don’t want to justify anything (but) to respond to the old boy network, it is really tough on women,” he added. “One of the main frustrations to me is that the business world is very discriminatory toward women . . . when the client wants to go out to the drinking establishment, it’s a man (client). Rarely do you see a woman in those positions. I think its very frustrating to the woman.

He agrees with survey respondents that law firms need to be humanized: “If you talk even to my wife, she’ll tell you . . . It’s hard on the family, my marriage to my profession. That is a problem . . . it’s been that way since I’ve been in it (26 years) and it’s gotten worse because of the emphasis on bottom line.”

Audre Engleman--a partner at Rogers and Wells, chair of the Status of Women Lawyers Committee for the Women Lawyers’ Assn. of Los Angeles and a member of the state Bar survey committee--says, “I think these surveys are extremely important. It’s a nonoffensive way of raising the issues and, the more that these issues are discussed, the more possibility there is that improvement will be made.”

For example, she said, it seems obvious that money is not the issue--women lawyers have plenty of money to pay for child care, but can’t find quality care. “People call it day care, but what about night care, when you’re working ‘till 9 or 10 o’clock?”

The survey by the California women lawyers’ group did not differ drastically in its findings from the national survey. For example, nearly half of the 600 respondents representing a cross section of women lawyers reported experiencing sexual harassment on the job, almost two-thirds believe they are not accepted as lawyers by men in the profession and 88% cited a subtle, pervasive gender bias in the profession.

In the California survey, one woman related the following: “The other day, we were sitting down to settlement negotiations with a big client. Just before the meeting started, my boss asked me to get him a cup of coffee. I was the only female attorney present. The message to The Boys: ‘She may be an attorney, but don’t take her seriously.’ ”

Respondents also said there was a widespread perception that being a parent is a liability for a woman lawyer. The survey said that addressing ways to make legal careers compatible with family life should be “of the highest priority” for the state Bar.

“I had a partner (at a New York firm) say to me last year, ‘There is no issue in women’s advancement here at this firm any more,’ ” Engleman noted. “Then, in another sentence, he said, ‘We can’t keep these women, though.’ The connection hasn’t been made that the place of employment is not hospitable.”

Engleman does not perceive hostility toward women in the profession. Rather, she says, it is a combination of “ignorance and economics.”

Discrimination has been a fact for women lawyers “in more or less overt fashion” since women came into the profession, said Margaret Morrow, a senior partner with Quinn, Kully and Morrow and last year’s county Bar president. “Many of these matters are questions of perception.

“I think very well-intentioned male attorneys and male businessmen don’t always appreciate the perception which either a chance remark or some other action on their part may have,” she said. “It’s a question of sensitivity more often than it is intentional differential treatment.”

In Morrow’s view, “The single most difficult issue facing women lawyers, and probably all women professionals, today” is balancing family life and career. “Where the battle lines are really being drawn are family-career issues and whose responsibility it is to care for and raise children”--his, hers or theirs.

Morrow is convinced that “legal employers, all employers, have to begin to recognize that, with so many women in the career marketplace, they are going to have to change their ways of doing business if they want to retain bright, talented, ambitious, achieving people.”

She is married to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul Boland and has a 2-year-old son.

But she says she juggles family life and career “at the cost of personal stress and strain. And that’s true of my husband, as well. It is a partnership (but) even so there are days when we wonder if we’ve prioritized correctly.”