‘Leaky pipeline’ into law schools puts women at career disadvantage

Women occupy nearly half of all the seats in American law schools, gaining credentials for a professional career once all but reserved for men. But their large presence on campus does not mean women have the same job prospects as men.

New research indicates that female law students are clustered in lower-ranked schools, and fewer women are enrolled in the most prestigious institutions. Such distribution can make a significant difference in whether female law graduates land legal jobs that pay higher wages and afford long-term job security and professional advancement.

Women “are less likely than men to attend the schools that send a high percentage of graduates into the profession,” said Deborah J. Merritt, a law professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, who co-wrote the report called, “The Leaky Pipeline for Women Entering the Legal Profession.”

Just the facts

The ‘leaky pipeline’ for women in the legal profession begins with law-school admissions

Law-school applicants as a share of college graduates

Men: 3.4%. Women: 2.6%.

Applicants admitted to law school

Men: 79.5%. Women: 75.8%.

Attending schools with…

Best placement rate

Men: 53.4 %. Women: 46.6 %.

Middling placement rate

Men: 54.3 %. Women: 45.7%.

Poor placement rate

Men: 44.1 %. Women: 55.9 %.

Source: Law School Transparency, Law School Admissions Council

This means women “start at a disadvantage” that may well continue throughout their professional lives, Merritt said.

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In contrast, the lowest-performing schools — the ones that listed fewer than 40 percent of their graduates in jobs that require bar passage — had noticeably higher female enrollment, at 55.9 percent of students.

That indicates women who graduate from less prestigious schools have fewer opportunities to be hired for their first full-fledged legal job, which can be decisive in shaping a career, Merritt said.

One reason for the gender gap, Merritt and McEntee said in the report, was that the national rankings have become so important that the 50 highest-ranked schools “increasingly stress LSAT (Law School Admission Test) scores over other admissions factors as they fight for better rankings. This disadvantages women, who have lower LSAT scores (on average) than men.”

Women score an average 2 points lower than men on the LSAT, which is still the key admissions number. Since school rankings are weighted heavily on this number, that discrepancy gives elite law schools a greater reason — all other things being equal — to accept a man over a woman.

Merritt also noted that test scores affect financial aid, which can be crucial in choosing a law school.

Prestigious schools have high tuition, and generous financial assistance helps to defray those costs, which can easily reach over $100,000.

Currently, there is little transparency in how law schools negotiate tuition assistance and whether there are gender differences influencing how such sums are distributed, although most schools admit they bargain over their overall price tag.

Some law schools that found their rolls seriously lacking female students have taken active steps to recruit them.

Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, for example, began taking a more active approach when its 2013 entering class shrank to 38 percent women, a drop from 45 percent the previous year.

“We noticed the dip in women and it was very disconcerting,” said Nancy Staudt, the school’s dean. “We have stepped up our efforts through social media and other means, to talk to those considering law school and those who have been accepted, and we try to find the right fit for them.”

By 2014, the school, which is 18th in the national rankings, had an entering class that was 43 percent female. The current 2016 class is 50 percent women, Staudt said.

More deans have been hands-on with recruiting since applicant numbers began to slide and tuition began to climb in recent years.

But while postgraduate employment is more transparent, the admissions process at the country’s 200-plus accredited law schools remains murky.

Jay Shively, dean for admissions and financial aid at Wake Forest University School of Law, said that the admissions process was “very numbers-driven” and that schools were aware of the repercussions “if they lose a couple of points on U.S. News,” referring to the U.S. News & World Report annual law school rankings.

“If you are a top 50 school, I think you have to be very aware of your medians and how losing a point or gaining a point might impact your ranking and thus the sort of student that might be attracted to you,” Shively said in a podcast produced by Law School Transparency.

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