Missing in Action: Women Attorneys in the Courtroom.

• Author: Manning, E. Nicole

COURTROOMS remain a center of power for the legal field and the representation of gender in the courtroom is an equally powerful statement on the position of women within the legal profession. (1) A strange phenomenon appears to be occurring in courtrooms across the country; although the percentage of women practicing law has gradually increased over time, women represent only a relatively static and small percentage of the courtroom attorney population. (2) Gender diversity in courtroom settings remain at low numbers compared to the larger pool of women attorneys in the legal profession overall. The percentage of women in the court-room also appears to occur at numbers far lower than the law school graduation rates would suggest. (3) This article examines the national demographic trends of women attorneys compared to women in the courtroom. Specifically, this survey analyzed studies on the quantity of women litigators in three varied locations (snapshots from New York, New Mexico, and the Northern District of Illinois), self-reported statistics from American Bar Association, and the national trends on diversity in law firms compared to the raw numbers of law school graduates. Finally, this article concludes with some observations on the data trends involving women attorneys overall to the more specialized number of women attorneys in the courtroom.

FRAMING THE DATA

In the late 1980s and early 1990's the number of women attending and graduating from law schools rose and began to come close to equaling the total number of male law students and graduates. (4) To some legal observers this trend suggested that gender parity across the legal profession might be achieved simply due to the overwhelming numbers of newly minted women attorneys who would achieve success at all levels of the legal profession. (5) As detailed below, the current reality is more complicated and remains far from this imagined future. Few legal organizations have consistently collected and reported data on the gender makeup of their membership and even fewer have maintained data on similar populations over time to allow for cross-comparisons over time. (6) Of those organizations, the American Bar Association (ABA) has conducted a number of surveys and also developed representative samples of gender representation at various levels of the legal profession. The comparison of the available ABA datasets to statistics collected by other professional organizations has necessarily involved the normalization of comparisons despite clear differences in the raw number of responses and data points. (7)

LAW FIRMS

Between 2006 and 2016, women's representation in law firms has increased, but only by a mere 0.92%. (8) The representation of women graduating law school in the same time frame has increased 2.71%. These increasing numbers of women graduates have made little impact (less than a 1% difference increase) in the overall numbers of women in law firms. In fact, compared with the 2009 numbers, there is an even greater gap, where the difference between graduates and law school...