Why Women Leave: The Law Firm Gender Gap and How to Close It

Overview

On-demand Webcast

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Cost: Complimentary

Sponsored by:

The legal industry’s gender gap is well documented: Women make up 50% of law firm associates but just 20% of equity partners. Despite widespread awareness of the issue, law firms are struggling to retain and advance talented women lawyers. Groundbreaking research from the ABA, authored by Roberta D. Liebenberg and Stephanie A. Scharf, investigates the factors contributing to this persistent gap while offering pragmatic solutions for change.

Burford Capital’s Equity Project also presents a pragmatic solution for change. The initiative is designed to close the gender gap in law by providing an economic incentive through a $50 million capital pool earmarked for financing commercial litigation and arbitration matters led by women.

Join this webcast to learn about these pragmatic solutions aimed at closing the gender gap, and gain insights into how law firms can retain and support female lawyers. You will also learn:

• How firms can support women lawyers and increase gender diversity.
• What strategies women lawyers should use to give themselves an advantage in an inequitable legal landscape.
• What tools firms and lawyers can use to close law’s gender gap.
• How legal finance can help level the playing field for women lawyers.

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Speakers:

Roberta (“Bobbi”) Liebenberg, a partner at Fine, Kaplan and Black in Philadelphia, focuses her practice on antitrust and class actions. She has been appointed by courts to represent plaintiff classes in many class actions, and is now Lead Counsel for the End Payer Purchaser class in the Generic Pharmaceuticals Pricing Antitrust Litigation, which is the largest pending antitrust MDL in the country.  She was one of trial counsel for the class in the Urethanes Antitrust Litigation, where a $1.06 billion judgment was entered against Dow Chemical Company after a four week jury trial.  That was the largest price-fixing judgment ever.  The judgment was affirmed by the Tenth Circuit and during Dow’s appeal to the Supreme Court, it settled for $835 million, the most ever obtained from a single defendant in a price-fixing case. She has also defended Fortune 500 companies, including Southwest Airlines, in class actions and other complex commercial litigation. Click here to read her full bio.

Stephanie A. Scharf, a partner at Scharf Banks Marmor, represents corporate clients and government entities in litigation and arbitration in a wide range of commercial disputes, class action defense, product liability and mass tort defense, insurance coverage for corporate policyholders, and employment litigation. In three decades of representing clients in federal and state courts, Stephanie has tried civil and criminal jury and bench trials, has managed the pre-trial, trial and appellate phases of litigation, and has overseen the resolution of multiple commercial disputes and complex tort actions. Stephanie frequently counsels companies on ways to avoid litigation and mitigate risks at the product or enterprise level.

Jessica Woodhouse is an experienced lawyer and a seasoned alliances and consultative legal sales professional. Prior to joining Burford, Ms. Woodhouse was Vice President of Business Development for LicenseLogix, where she built and ran a national alliances program. Previously, she was Counsel for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, focused on providing legal advice and strategy for their group insurance and employee benefits products. Ms. Woodhouse began her career as a Management Consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, before moving to Latham & Watkins as an Associate.