Law firm leaders routinely discuss how to address diversity. Yet despite multiple definitions, no consensus exists about what it means in practice. For lawyers who like certainty that can be challenging as firms seek to boost their diversity through recruitment, targets, retention and, of course, benchmarking against each other.
The situation as it stands
Law firms certainly fare well in the gender balance when recruiting. For the first time in 2023, just over half of al US associates were female (50.3%) according to the American Bar Association, while women have comprised the majority of newly-qualified UK solicitors for more than two decades.
But fast forward to partnership and the picture changes: among big US and UK firms, the drop-out rate for women is nearly twice that of their male counterparts. Because fewer of them stay on to become partners, the gender balance remains stubbornly unbalanced. At UK law firms with more than 50 partners, only 28% are female, while in the US, the figure is almost identical, 27.8%.