3rd Best Job for Women? A Lawyer

Knowing that like many other jobs, women lawyers earn just 75% of their male counterparts’ salaries, it came as a surprise that Forbes Magazine chose the job of “Lawyer” as the 3rd best for women. According to the article, just 37% of working lawyers in the profession are women. Obviously, it will take years for the demographics of law students to mirror the demographics of working lawyers. But 37% still seems quite low since women comprised just 37% of law students in the 1982-1983 school year and have increased in proportion since then. The 1992-1993 school year has been the only year that women comprised a slight majority of law students, at 50.4% nationwide – but has since decreased, down to 46.9% in the 2007-2008 school year.

Not Our Mother’s Law School (A Glimmer of Hope)

The article undertaken by students of a gender law course at Chicago-Kent School of Law entitled, “Not Our Mother’s Law School?” is especially insightful because it is an “update” to the 90’s studies and confirms that what was true then is still true now.  Additionally, previous studies have been focused on notoriously “top” law schools (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of California-Berkley), whereas this study takes place at the Chicago-Kent School of Law which is a “Tier 2” law school, and has been for quite some time.  This is relevant because when I had read the previous studies that focused on top law schools in the 1990’s, I began to hypothesize that women’s experiences in law schools were 1) different in the 90’s and more on-par with male’s experiences in the 2000’s; and 2) that women’s experiences at top law schools were different than at law schools outside of the top 20 on U.S. News & World Reports law school rankings.  This study is valuable in that the authors first reviewed nineteen works related to women’s experiences in law school, spanning from 1987 to 2006; many of which I have also read.  This provides the authors with a foundation for comparing the previous works.

Research Question 1: Had women’s experiences in law school changed since Guinier and her colleagues first undertook their study in 1994? 

Research Question 2: Were women’s experiences at Chicago-Kent different than those at more prestigious schools, especially since Chicago-Kent had admitted women since the 1890’s?

Answer: Experiences had not changed, but the performance gap has decreased (when comparing Guinier’s results of the University of Penn study to this study of Chicago-Kent)

Reducing the “Becoming Gentlemen” Affect by Increasing Female Law Faculty

Carlson’s review of Lanie Guinier’s  “Becoming Gentlemen” argues that the alienation of women and minors continues in law school and that institutions must focus on institutional acceptance and absorption of diversity in place of the imposition of a “one-size-fits-all” mentality (Carlson 1998, 317).  Additionally, Guinnier’s “latest work provides a timely contribution to the defense of affirmative action policies in law school faculty hiring decisions” (Carlson 1998, 318). However, Carlson’s review of “Becoming Gentlemen” “concludes that while Guinier’s findings are valauble, law schools need to first focus on providing women with equal access to desirable faculty positions before her recommendations can become a meaningful reality” (Carlson 1998, 318).

Hypothesis: In order for women law students to achieve equal experiences in law school, law schools must increases the proportion of women faculty because they will serve as mentors to women law students. To do this, affirmative action programs which have recently come under attack, must be defended.