Knowledge Center

Women in Law in Canada and the U.S.

Data and sources for Canada and the United States.

Canada

About Half of Lawyers Who Enter the Legal Profession Are Women 

In 2014, there were 40,920 practicing women lawyers and 53,153 practicing men lawyers.1

  • For new lawyers (practicing for 0-5 years), women are in, or close to the majority in many regions.2

    • British Columbia: 50.1%

    • Ontario: 52.0%

    • Quebec (Barreau du Quebec): 62.9%

    • New Brunswick:  51.2%

    • Nova Scotia: 52.3%

    • Newfoundland and Labrador: 52.5%

  • In 2015, more women lawyers were issued licenses than men in Ontario (1,129 compared to 1,072).3

  • Overall, more women have been licensed than men in Ontario between the years 2011 and 2015 (except for 2012).4

More Women Are Educated in Law but Significantly Fewer Make it to Partner

  • Type of License in Ontario in 2014 (%)5

 

Sole Practice

Law Firm Partner

Law Firm Associate

Law Firm Employee

Legal Clinic

In-House

Women

14.4%

9.7%

17.6%

2.9%

1.9%

13.6%

Men

26.1%

23.5%

15.1%

2.5%

0.6%

10.3%

 

 

Government

Education

Retired/Not Working

Other and New Licenses

Women

18.7%

1.9%

12.3%

7.1%

Men

10.0.%

1.0%

4.8%

6.0%

  • One Ontario study found that a large percentage of both women and men with a child under 6 years of age leave private practice. (There is a 17-point drop out for women and 16-point drop out for men).6

    • As children grow older, men return to private practice but many fewer women ultimately return.7

  • Women earn 93% of men’s salaries across all stages. In the largest private firms, women earn 91% of men’s salaries.8

Visible Minority and Aboriginal Lawyers Remain Underrepresented

The representation of racialized*9 lawyers has increased, but the number does not reflect the general population.10

  • In Ontario in 2014,11

    • Racialized lawyers represented 17.6% in the profession and 26% of the Ontario population.

    • Aboriginal lawyers represented 1.5% of the profession while they represented 2.3% of the Ontario population. 

United States

Almost Half of All Law School Graduates Are Women

  • Women have been approximately half of law school graduates for the past 20 years.12

    • In 2012-2013 women made up 47.0% of J.D. students.13


  • Minority students’ J.D. enrollment has been slowly increasing over the years.14

    • In the 2013-2014 academic year, people of color made up 26.9% of J.D. students.15

Although Women Are Almost Half of All Associates, Partners Continue to Be Predominantly White Men16

Although women make up about half of all law school graduates, the number of women in entry-level positions in law firms is shrinking.17 At the lowest level since 2006, women made up 44.7% of associates in 2015.18

In 2015, women made up 34.5% of all employed lawyers.19

A disproportionately low number of women advance into the highest ranks of large firms.20

  • In 2015, white men represented about 74% of all partners.21

  • Equity partners remain disproportionately men (82.6%) in 2015.22

    • 17.4% of equity partners were women.


  • Among non-equity partners, 

    • 28.8% were women.23

    • 71.2% were men.24

Progress is Slow: Women and Men of Color Remain Underrepresented at Law Firms25

Law Firm Demographic Data26

Associates

Equity Partners

Non-equity Partners

Of Counsel

All Lawyers

White/Caucasian

75.9%

91.8%

89.4%

85.6%

83.8%

All Racial Minorities

23.5%

7.9%

10.2%

12.3%

15.7%

African-American/Black

4.2%

1.8%

2.7%

2.8%

3.1%

Asian

11.4%

3.1%

3.4%

5.0%

7.1%

Hispanic/Latino

4.8%

2.4%

3.1%

3.1%

3.6%

Multiracial

2.9%

0.5%

0.8%

1.2%

1.7%

Alaska Native/American Indian

0.2%

0.1%

0.2%

0.2%

0.2%

Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander

0.1%

0.03%

0.1%

0.04%

0.1%

 

All Women

45.2%

19.5%

29.2%

39.4%

34.4%

Women of Color

13.1%

2.4%

4.3%

6.6%

7.9%

 

Openly LGBTQ

3.0%

1.7%

1.6%

1.8%

2.3%

Individuals with Disabilities

0.3%

0.3%

0.3%

0.5%

0.3%

 

  • In 2015, racial/ethnic minorities represented:27

    • 5.6% of equity partners. 

    • 9.4% of non-equity partners. 

Women Are Advancing Their Representation as Legal Chiefs in Fortune 500 Companies.28

  • In 2015, there were 120 women serving as General Counsel at Fortune 500 companies, holding 24% of those top roles.29

  • Women of color continue to lag in advancement and representation. The ratio of white women to women of color was about 5:1.30

Women Lawyers Are Paid Less Than Their Male Counterparts

In 2015, women lawyers’ weekly salary as a percentage of men lawyers’ salary was 89.7%.31

Median weekly earnings for women were $1,717 while men earned $1,914 in 2015.32

  • A 2016 survey of US and global big-firms found that men partners earned 44% more than women partners. Women partners earned an average of USD $659,000 while men partners earned average of USD $949,000.33

Additional Resources

Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers, “Executive Summary,” Best Law Firms for Women 2016 (2016).

Vault and MCAA, 2016 Vault/MCAA Law Firm Diversity Survey Report (2016).

National Association of Women Lawyers, Report of the Ninth Annual Survey by National Association of Women Lawyers (2015).

National Association for Law Placement, Diversity through Infographics: From Law School to Partnership (2016).

American Bar Association, A Current Glance at Women in the Law (2016).

 

How to cite this product: Catalyst. Quick Take: Women in Law. New York: Catalyst, April 19, 2017.

 

2 Reader Comments

What Constitution? says:
10/7/2013 07:19:57

I do wonder why so many people lament the "glass ceiling" aspect of law partnerships but none examine why it is that law partnerships appear permitted to allow such a glass ceiling to persist.


For a long time now, law and accounting partnerships have been suffered to defended against "discrimination" claims by arguing that "a 'partner' is not an 'employee' under the anti-discrimination laws". Nobody seems to notice or care, however, that the actual text of the anti-discrimination laws bars a covered legal entity (any large partnership) from discriminating against any "individual" in terms or conditions of an employment relationship. There is no doubt but that the terminology was intended and there is no doubt but that the "term 'individual' is a broader term than 'employee", as the Supreme Court expressly has emphasized when interpreting this law.


How lower courts reached the conclusion that the statutory text should be disregarded and that partnerships should be given an exemption from civil rights law if they can characterize a "partner" as being "not an 'employee'" has an interesting historical development that is brought to mind by Elizabeth Warren's recent observations about a judiciary that is an "arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce": in fact, the single judicial decision said to have established the "principle" that partners in large partnerships should be deemed unprotected by the plain language of Section 703(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if they are "not an 'employee'" was authored by a Tenth Circuit judge who had been the President of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce before President Reagan appointed him to the bench -- and whose 1987 decision in Wheeler v. Main Hurdman rejected both the lower court's and the EEOC's understanding that a "partner" is an "individual" and protected by Title VII. That decision is plainly wrong, and although a 1997 Supreme Court decision clearly emphasized that what Title VII does is protect "individuals", not just "employees", no case has yet applied that ruling to partner discrimination claims. The law, as written, considers status as an "employee" relevant only for the jurisdictional question of whether an employer entity is large enough to be subject to federal law, but once that test is met such an employer entity cannot discriminate against any "individual" for the reasons proscribed in Title VII. It's that plain.


The passage of time has done little to nothing to elucidate the issue presented -- but twenty years after Hishon, people are commenting on the dearth of high-level women in the partnership ranks even though women have reached parity in law school admissions and non-equity positions. People are hypothesizing about "leaning in" and looking for psychological distinctions for the disparity -- but all the while, the caselaw has continued to presume (without questioning) the "principle" that large partnerships may discriminate against women and minority partners because those are not "employees". And in an interesting reality, the "old boys" who head the big firms and author the treatises have continued to publish their texts without mentioning what the text of the law actually provides, and without deviating from treating the "principle" of exemption as presumed. To be sure, the same arguments continue to be made by the business community -- even now, the AICPA vigorously is advocating this same premise before the EEOC in defending discriminatory mandatory partner retirement "exemption" contentions under the Age Discrimination laws ( which draw upon Title VII principles).


One cannot help but read the current wave of analyses seeking to explain the continuing paucity of successful women at the top of the legal and accounting business structures without at least reflecting upon the possible impact of the continuing sanction of discriminatory animus toward women in that environment. It seems plausible that one possible factor to explain the absence of more "highly successful women" in the highest levels of legal and accounting partnerships might be the fact that legal and accounting partnerships have little to no incentive to permit that to happen. Once a woman accedes to partnership, the "protections" reflected toward "mere employees" (as mandated in partnership consideration by the Supreme Court's Hishon decision in 1984, but not thereafter due to the "not an employee" construct) effectively melt away without recourse. Maybe that plays a part.


What Constitution? says:
3/13/2014 11:32:27

On March 4, 2014, the Supreme Court decided Lawson v. FMR, interpreting Congress' statutory whistleblower protections afforded "employees" under the Sarbannes-Oxley Act, 15 USC 1514A(a). It is impossible to read the majority opinion, the concurrence or even the dissent in that case and credibly maintain the fiction that Congress' use of the term "individual" (rather than merely "employee") to define those protected against invidious discrimination by an "employer" entity subject to the proscriptions of Section 703(a) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is somehow meaningless, or ambiguous, or can be overcome because an "individual" may be denominated a "partner". Impossible. A reading of Lawson is recommended.


Of course, those benefiting by advocating disregard of the text of the Civil Rights Act in such matters are fully aware that the law itself does not support the argument they make: even the AICPA, in formal submissions to the EEOC in support of treating "partners" as outside the scope of federal age discrimination principles, refers to this concept only as an EEOC "policy", not actually law. Does the EEOC have the power to write Congress' provisions out of the laws it is charged with enforcing?


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