That the balance between men and women at the bottom of the law-firm pyramid has more or less evened out is making very little difference at the top, says new research from Stanford Law School.

The new report entitled ‘Retaining and Advancing Women in National Law Firms’ shows that achievements in gender equality at US law schools, where women have made up more than 50 per cent of graduates for decades, have failed to trigger any meaningful knock-on effects in the upper echelons of the nation’s top law firms. Of the 250 biggest law firms in the US, the report found that only five had partnerships where at least 25 per cent of equity partners are women. The report also found that women lawyers in large firms billed fewer hours, earned lower salaries (even after controlling for factors like fewer billed hours), were retained at lower rates and were significantly less likely to advance to the partnership than their male colleagues. ‘This is a very real and costly exodus of talent for firms,’ argues the report, citing one study which places the average cost to law firms for the attrition of each associate at $400,000.

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Stanford Law School’s full report can be found here.

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