If lawyers lack looks, lucre lags.

Better-looking attorneys earn more than their worse-looking colleagues, according to Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas at Austin economics professor who is studying the relationship between beauty and earnings among lawyers. Moreover, attorneys in the private sector are better looking than those in the public sector. "Lawyers who are good looking in the public sector tend to switch to the private firms to take advantage of their good looks and vice versa."

Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle of Michigan State University found that an increase in attractiveness ups the probability of early partnership in law firms for men, while the results for women revealed one of the few significant differences in the effect of beauty by sex. Greater attractiveness among women lowers their chances of early partnership. "The good-looking woman is apparently penalized in this business," Hamermesh points out.

The researchers studied a large sample of attorneys who graduated from one law school. Beauty was measured by ratings of their first-year law school photographs on a scale from strikingly handsome or beautiful; above-average attractiveness; average; plain, below average in attractiveness; or homely, far below average in attractiveness. Because some of the photos were as much as 25 years old, the raters were instructed to make allowances for the fact that styles and fashions may have changed. More than 4,400 photographs were evaluated.

Hamermesh...