A gathering of women in-house counsel on the eve of the American Bar Association’s Women in Law Leadership (WILL) Academy was set up to foster discussions on how female in-house counsel can, and need to, help promote women in law firms and the profession as a whole. But survey results presented at Wednesday’s talk at times showed how little influence in-house counsel currently have on the way women lawyers are paid and advanced in law firms.
The first-ever regional summit for in-house counsel presented by the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession was held in Philadelphia in advance of the two-day leadership academy being held today and Friday. At the summit, Minority Corporate Counsel Association Executive Director Veta T. Richardson presented the results of a joint study by the MCCA, the ABA’s commission and the Project for Attorney Retention at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. The study, “Survey of Women Partners on Law Firm Compensation,” asked nearly 700 female partners in regional and international firms alike how they are compensated and promoted in their firms.
