Women now majority of law firm associates, set to lead ‘Decade of the Female Lawyer’
For the first time, women now make up the majority of law firm associates. They also comprise more than 40% of the federal government’s lawyers, according to the American Bar Association’s 2024 ABA Profile of the Legal Profession.
The report predicts that 2016 to 2026 “may become known as the Decade of the Female Lawyer,” with the profession shifting from a male majority to a female majority.
“Male attorneys still outnumber female attorneys 58% to 41%, but the gap is narrowing as U.S. law schools award more juris doctor degrees to women than men every year, while older lawyers — predominantly men — are retiring,” according to the report.
From 2019 through 2023, JD degrees were awarded to 12,175 more women than men, with a corresponding increase of women entering the profession.
The sixth annual ABA report compiles statistics and trends about lawyers, judges, and law students. This year’s report covers five areas: lawyer demographics, lawyer wages, judges, legal education, and a new chapter focused on women in the profession. The statistics are drawn from sources within the ABA and from courts, government agencies, and nonprofit groups.
The rise of women as the majority of associates was based on annual survey data gathered by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), released in January.
The report states that 58% of female law school graduates choose jobs in private firms. While a comparable 60% of male law school graduates also choose to work in private practice, the higher number of female law students overall has resulted in the demographic shift — a trend that is expected to continue.
The report noted that average wages for lawyers shot up 19.2% from 2021 to 2023. However, it was silent on whether the pay gap for women has narrowed.
In 2020, legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa reported, “Male equity partners in major law firms saw an increase of 42% in their overall compensation over the past decade, while female equity partners saw 22% growth.” An article in the March/April edition of the Journal, titled “Pay Transparency: A Remedy for the Gender Pay Gap?,” indicated the disparity persists.
The number of female lawyers continues to increase despite a popular perception that women are more at-risk to leave the profession than men. This idea is predicated on the popular assumption that women usually bear the brunt of responsibility for child- and elder-care responsibilities and could explain, at least in part, law firms’ reasoning in offering lower wages to women lawyers.
Citing figures from the NALP, the report found the rate of men and women law school graduates entering government service is comparable: 12% for men and 11% for women. Once again, with more women earning JDs, the comparative number of women entering government service is greater than the number of men.
The report examined federal workforce data that showed female attorneys to be the majority in some government agencies, including Education (69%), Health and Human Services (66%), Labor (63%), Housing and Urban Development (59%), State (59%), Veterans Affairs (58%), Commerce (58%), Interior (56%), Transportation (54%), Energy (51%), and the Social Security Administration (61%). Women lawyers are still the minority, however, in larger agencies with more lawyers overall, such as the Justice Department, Department of Defense, Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Not included in the report but implicit in the data, it seems Title VII protections coupled with EEOC measures taken a decade ago to support pay transparency may be a point of consideration for women lawyers entering government service in the same way that those protections have ameliorated hiring parity for racial minorities.
Among the statistics on women from the report:
- 41% of all U.S. lawyers are women, and that number is growing; in 2014, it was 36%.
- Since 2020, a majority of the 44,000 general lawyers in the executive branch of the federal government have been women.
- 56.2% of law school students are now women, outnumbering men in law school attendance since 2016. Women’s enrollment has risen steadily for the past seven years while men’s enrollment has seen annual declines since 2010.
- In 2024 or 2025, women are anticipated to become the majority of full-time faculty members in ABA-accredited law schools.
The report notes that even with the numbers trending toward a continuing increase in women, “men still dominate the upper echelons of the legal profession through federal judgeships, state supreme courts, law firm partnerships and corporate counsel positions. For example, in 2023, only 28% of law firms’ partners were women.”
The gender numbers have changed drastically over the past half-century. From 1950 to 1970, only 3% of all lawyers were women. The percentage has grown gradually since then — to 8% in 1980, 20% in 1991, 27% in 2000, and 41% in 2024, according to the report.
