PAR's Report on New Partners
The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR) released its yearly report on the percentage of women in law firms’ 2009 partner classes, and the news is pretty grim.
14 firms did not make a single woman partner (Cadwalader, Cleary Gottlieb, Dechert, Foley Hoag, Kaye Scholer, Lowenstein Sandler, Milbank, Schulte Roth, Steptoe, Strook, Venable, Wachtell, White & Case, and Wilkie Farr), and several others came in below 20% (Pillsbury Winthrop (9%), Latham & Watkins (10%), O’Melveny (11%), Howrey (13%), Finnegan Henderson (13%), Morrison & Foerster (13%), Winston & Strawn (13%), Locke Lord (14%), Nixon Peabody (14%), DLA Piper (15%), Ropes (17%) and Akin Gump (17%)).
The good news is that there were a handful of firms with partner classes that were 50% or more women (Cravath (67%), Dickstein Shapiro (67%), Wiley Rein (60%), Andrews Kurth (57%), Bryan Cave (56%), Arent Fox (50%), Baker & Daniels (50%), Hogan & Hartson (50%), Holland and Hart (50%), King and Spalding (50%), Luce Forward (50%), Simpson Thacher (50%), and Sullivan & Cromwell (50%)), and special mention goes to Arnold & Porter, Crowell & Moring, Perkins Coie, and Sullivan and Cromwell, who have all had new partner classes that were 40% or more women for the past 3 years.
Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009