How Top U.S. Law Firms Get Away with Paying Women Less

Isn't this usually still quantified and shared though? I doubt her 2 million in revenue from the article is just what she personally billed.

Women lawyers can get together and start their own law firms. The same goes for any lawyer who is convinced he/she is unfairly underpaid.

Was the study experimental and awarded participants millions of dollars for acting rationally (i.e. against their biases)?

This comment makes a good argument, yet it is downvoted without any explanations–as is the similar argument by delazeur.

Here's the famous "blind orchestra audition" study: http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/7b.shtml. It showed that women are 50% (!) more likely to be hired when auditioning behind a curtain.

Surely this couldn't happen in reality, because some other orchestra would use the chance to hire all these highly qualified women, right?

While there may be very good counter arguments, I dont buy your bank robber argument. If I were putting together an ocean's 11 team, I would try to attract better bank robbers by offering them a greater cut. Sure this is negative value for the bank, but positive value to me and my team.

The entirety of human history puts lie to this false assertion, and the continued necessity of laws to prohibit such behavior shows that nothing has changed. The market is more than willing to put up with a gross inefficiency if it reinforces the dominant narrative and market participants have shown themselves ready to collectively make less if it means that members of disfavored groups make much, much less.

The link in the GP says that 120 of Fortune 500 general counsels - not the equivalents of partners but of the heads of firms - are women, which I'm guessing is a far higher proportion than their major law firm equivalents. I always assumed that was because there is less discrimination in the Fortune 500 general counsel offices. I know a woman who is an attorney in a U.S. federal court; a large majority of her co-workers are women; is that because they face less discrimination than in firms?

(Note that on HN we often have to speculate about the experiences of women; there are so few here who can talk about it. I expect to find male attorneys on this thread, but I would be happily surprised if a female attorney appeared to share an on-the-ground perspective with us.)

It reminds me of Justice Ginsburg (obviously from a different era) who said she was a judge mostly because, despite her elite law school credentials and talent, she couldn't get a desirable job in a law firm.

EDIT:

> Having a 25%-33% chance your boss or client will be a woman creates the kind of culture necessary to attract a gender-balanced pipeline. A woman going into law hoping to make partner is signing up to be in a (large) minority, but the ratio is nothing like a woman going into tech hoping to become a Senior Engineer faces.

That culture isn't working well (as you said, 'challenges remain'). Per the link in the GP, over 80% of equity partners are male.

But I agree, it's still nothing like tech.

I'm not sure how that data changes my points in the GP.

> White men were 38.52% of the civilian noninstitutional population

That's pretty close to the 33% number I gave for the entire population. Also, non-white Americans are imprisoned at much higher rates than white-skinned ones, so that would seem to corroborate my number closely.

> White men were ... 43.14% of the employed work force

I'm not sure how that applies. It may demonstrate the high degree of discrimination against people who aren't white men. Is your point that there some discrimination is further down the pipeline than hiring and promotion of lawyers? That is a certainty.

> 88.6% of lawyers are white

Regarding racial discrimination: About 66% of the U.S. population is white-skinned, and I believe the proportion is lowest among children and therefore higher in the workforce. Given white-skinned people's great advantages in access to education and to the social connections that are so valuable to success (as we know, people tend to hire other people who are like them), the 88.6% isn't a surprise, but it's a serious problem.

Regarding gender discrimination: That number represents all white-skinned people, not just men; it says nothing about gender discrimination. The numbers in my GP comment and another comment quoting the same data are pretty shocking:

> white men represented about 74% of all partners

> over 80% of equity partners are male

> possibility there are fewer non-white people in the pipeline at law firms

> how many of those women fell off the partner track when they had families?

There are infinite possibilities. We need a factual basis to distinguish which ones are worthy of consideration.

This assuming that "standing to sue" is equal to justice, which it isn't

Musk has 5 kids and 2 ex-wives. How many ex-husbands does our lawyer have, and how many of her ex-husbands themselves have an 8 figure net worth from the divorce?

He's also been divorced twice, what's your point?