When labor and employment lawyer Bettina “Betsy” Plevan goes to court, she often finds herself facing off against another woman. “It would be rare not to have women on both sides in an employment case,” says Plevan, a partner at New York’s Proskauer Rose. Plaintiffs lawyer Anne Vladeck, a partner at Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, agrees. “It’s not unusual for the courtroom to be all women in an employment case; you won’t find that in an antitrust case,” Vladeck says. “If a man walked by, he’d probably think we’re sitting around talking about shopping.”
Testosterone may fuel much of the legal profession, but in labor and employment law, there’s an estrogen surge. In the big general practice firms that have major labor and employment groups, the percentage of women partners in that specialty practice frequently surpasses that of women partners in the firm overall [see chart here]. One extreme example: Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, where women represent 34 percent of labor and employment partners but only 14.9 percent of all the firm’s women partners. It’s a similar story at Jones Day (28 percent versus 18 percent overall). Though less dramatic, the gender gap is also noticeable at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Proskauer; and Seyfarth Shaw. The pattern persists at the nation’s two largest labor and employment specialty firms. At 753-lawyer Littler Mendelson, women account for 31 percent of the firm’s shareholders. At 566-lawyer Jackson Lewis, women constitute 23.7 percent of the partnership. At all these firms (with the exception of Proskauer), the percentage of women partners in labor and employment tops the average 19 percent women partner rate at Am Law 200 firms.
