In every profession, working parents face immense challenges. The latest American Bar Association report, Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers, released by the ABA Commission on Women, documents how lawyers navigate their careers and family life and how such challenges are especially acute for mothers in comparison with fathers. This issue of The Practice includes excerpts and data from the ABA report, which in full presents findings from a survey of over 8,000 lawyers and insights from 10 focus groups. Even as many lawyers occupy a privileged class—with access to money, education, and other benefits—the responsibilities of caregiving that disproportionately fall on women create a profession plagued by inequity, something the report seeks to rectify with its recommendations. As the report says:
For the past 25 years, women and men have entered the legal profession in roughly equal numbers. Despite the steady influx of women lawyers, they continue to be much less likely to attain the top levels of leadership in their organizations and the most powerful, prestigious, and highly compensated positions. This lack of real progress is not the result of any inherent gender differences or a lack of ambition or talent. Rather, as highlighted by this Report, women, and especially women with children, face unique biases and obstacles in the workplace that impede their advancement as compared to their male colleagues. These challenges are exacerbated by policies and practices used by many legal employers that are too inflexible to accommodate the child care and home life responsibilities that mothers disproportionately bear compared to fathers.
We complement this lead article with “Precedents for Law Student Parents,” in which we talk to individuals about their pregnancy and parenting journeys during law school. While federal and state laws protect pregnant individuals from bias and discrimination, the reality of parenting and pregnancy during law school can “feel like an uphill battle meant for [you] to fail,” says Bree Koegel, who entered law school with a one-year-old and had a second child during her 3L year at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
We conclude with two Speaker’s Corners. In “Changing Culture Through Repetition,” former ABA president (2015–2016) Paulette Brown speaks to the recommendations contained in the report, Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers. While many may not be surprised at what is necessary to build a better profession for working parents—more flexibility, generous parental leave, conscientious on-ramp programs—seeing such recommendations adopted in a widespread manner will take more work. Brown admits, “Over the course of presenting this report, many lawyers asked us, ‘Why do you have to tell people the same thing over, and over, and over again?’” she says. “The truth is: because you do. My mother would always say, ‘It bears repeating.’ Ongoing and consistent education is important,” Brown explains.
Last, in “Fostering a Caregiving Economy,” David B. Wilkins, faculty director of the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, asks Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, to reflect on her viral 2012 article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” and what it would take to build a more inclusive society for caregivers. Dr. Slaughter says:
In addition to implementing policies, we also need to change the social norms around the idea that everyone’s going to be a caregiver. This is all of us at the deepest level. CEOs and managers need to think about this. We have got to stop thinking about professional people as only career- or achievement-oriented. We need to assume that all human beings have a connected side, have a need for belonging and for being able to care for others and to be cared for. A healthy society and a healthy workplace makes room for that side of who we are.
An interview with Karol Corbin Walker, chair, ABA Commission on Women in the Profession
The Practice: I understand you began your tenure as chair of the ABA Commission on Women this year, so the report, Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers, must have already begun, but I’d love to start by asking what you see as the most eye-opening aspect of the report’s findings on the challenges faced by lawyers with caregiving responsibilities?
Karol Corbin Walker: I just completed my first year as chair, and the report was already in the works, and it just happened to be released during my leadership. It is an incredible report, and the Commission’s research, I believe, brought to light with concrete statistical evidence that there is a maternal wall.
People always talk about the motherhood penalty, but it’s broader—it’s a maternal wall in the legal profession. Based on the results of the study, women with children are far more likely than men with children to experience demeaning comments, lack of access to professional development opportunities, denial of salary increase or bonus, and a lack of professional sponsors or mentors. It’s the Commission’s hope that by highlighting these findings that were uncovered in the research, as well as presenting recommendations, which you saw at the end of the report, that they’ll be able to help alleviate the biases toward mothers and child caregivers and that those . . . in the legal sphere in the workplace can make a difference and act upon it vigilantly.
The Practice: I was struck when reading the introduction how many citations there are to previous ABA reports on these issues. How are you thinking about monitoring progress, tracking and evaluating whether or not the profession is adopting the recommendations and what metrics you’ll look to assess success?
Corbin Walker: The Commission has issued many reports for a long time, and we’ve been doing it on various issues, but they all relate to equity with respect to the advancement of women lawyers. The Commission is currently building an online toolkit designed to push out the recommendations that were presented in the report to a much wider audience. While the Commission will not track the implementation of the recommendations presented in the study, we hope that the organizations that review the study will themselves track the differences they see in the engagement, advancement, and retention of women lawyers. There are just so many works that the ABA Commission on Women has done over the years. It’s difficult for the Commission itself to be the overseer of progress for each and every report. That’s why the toolkits empower organizations that are truly committed for the advancement of women lawyers within their particular organizations to hold themselves accountable and to develop metrics that are defined, transparent, and achievable.
The Practice: As you note, it shouldn’t all be on the ABA or the ABA Commission on Women to ensure progress is made. What transformative shifts do you believe are necessary to foster a lasting impact across the industry?
Corbin Walker: That’s a large undertaking. It’s very vast. It’s very broad. But, some things I think you would have to incorporate in order to create a more equitable and supportive environment for all professional women or men that have caregiving responsibilities [are] transparent standards that are related to advancement and compensation.
What you found in the study is that people that had childcare responsibilities—particularly women, because it’s more so women than men, although there were some men who shouldered more of the burden—there was a penalty with respect to the amount of money they were making. There was a penalty with respect to how much origination credit they were given. And if you’re in a law firm, that’s very important. There also should be written standards and procedures that are related to succession planning. Hopefully certain firms are identifying women who can be moved into these leadership positions when people retire. That’s important because that’s how you have stakeholders in the firm that are going to make a difference. I’m a firm person, so most of the things that I talk about are from the firm perspective.
I think there’s also something that’s broader. There has to be an acceptance and encouragement of people utilizing the parental leave policies, not just by women but by all genders. It’s important. It’s important that people who adopt, people who give birth, people who are the fathers, people who are partners . . . take advantage of these policies because when you see higher-ups taking advantage of the policies, you lose that stigma that’s sometimes associated with parental leave policies. Those are the types of things that would be needed in order for us to accomplish that goal.
Karol Corbin Walker is a partner at Kaufman Dolowich and chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.