Scholar of Women Lawyers Sees New Career-Path Shift, Cites Generation Gap

Newswise — California Western School of Law Professor Jacquelyn Slotkin, a scholar of career issues among America's women lawyers, says today's female attorneys approach career advancement challenges differently than those of decades past. In many cases, she says, that means using their legal and professional experience when they hit the proverbial glass ceiling to "jump ship" from law firms to pursue other career opportunities.

"Women of my generation were willing to give up everything in order to be partners in big firms," says Slotkin, who has examined the career paths of women in the legal field in the United States and abroad. "What I see happening today with the newer generations is that they want more balance in life"¦and they're finding that big-firm practice often means they can't have it all, so they find other alternatives that give them the ability to do it all."

Her recently published book It's Harder In Heels: Essays by Women Lawyers Achieving Work-Life Balance (Vandeplas Publishing) points to the legal culture as one still predominately ruled by white-male tradition, and is one in which change does not seem on the horizon. "Firms have been reluctant or incapable of making organizational changes that would retain and promote greater numbers of women lawyers," Slotkin says. "We wanted to chronicle the struggles of women who are constantly trying to maintain a work-life balance in a very demanding profession."

Slotkin, a professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego for 15 years, developed the law school's academic support program for entering diversity students. She researches women's issues related to advancement in the law.

Through a collection of essays, Slotkin's book—co-edited with her daughter, Los Angeles attorney Samantha Slotkin Goodman—addresses key issues confronting today's female lawyers, from glass ceilings to the impact of the "maternal wall" on getting ahead in the legal profession. "The legal culture is still largely white, male and traditional," Slotkin points out. "In the big law firms, male partners play golf and schmooze the clients. A lot of them have been practicing for decades, and those kinds of people don't change easily."

Indeed, women are more prominent in the areas of government, legal services or public defender, public interest, nonprofit, and education, she says, whereas men are more prominent in solo practice, large, private firms, and business settings. "Women often find that it is easier to leave than to try and effect change within law-firm culture."

She has been researching female roles since 1976 when she surveyed and analyzed data about female college graduates for her Ph.D. dissertation. In 1996 and in 2002, she surveyed an ethnically diverse population of female attorneys to determine if educated women were experiencing role conflict. "Unfortunately," she says, "the work culture has remained the same despite the growing number of women entering the workplace, and the number of women graduating from law school does not reflect the numbers of women in law firms."

According to Slotkin, women have made much progress in the workplace in recent decades, but notes that, when you look at the percentage of females in the legal profession over the past decade, women have only made a gain of three points—from 37 percent of legal professionals in 1992 to 40 percent in 2002. Also, on average, there are about 13 women partners at a typical U.S. law firm, compared with 63 white men who are partners, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This despite the fact that women account for half of associates in law firms across the U.S. "It's not just a women's issue anymore," she says. "It's bigger than just women, and it is clearer than ever that changes that will help women stay in their careers and get ahead when they are supposed to are long overdue."