Breaking the Courtroom Glass Ceiling
June 27, 2017
For the last 20 years, approximately half of all law school graduates have been women. Yet, as has been widely reported, women only make up slightly more than 20 percent of the partnership at major law firms, with even fewer women becoming equity partners.
Female lawyers have also struggled to break into the ranks of trial lawyers. In 2015, the American Bar Foundation conducted a study looking at the participation of women lawyers as lead and trial counsel in litigation. They found that men are three times more likely than women to appear as trial attorneys in civil cases and, in class actions, nearly 90 percent of lead counsel are men.
