Just 19 percent of U.S. law firm partners were women in 2011. And while nearly half (42 percent) of the members of the Association of Corporate Counsel are female, just 101 women (or 20 percent) hold the chief legal officer position among Fortune 500 firms. For the rest of the Fortune 1000 (companies ranked 501 to 1000 in revenue), 82 CLOs (or 16 percent) are women. These numbers should be much higher given that women have comprised nearly half of the nation’s law school enrollment for more than two decades.
What is the problem? What are the major hurdles standing in the way of a woman’s advancement in the legal profession? How have certain women attorneys beaten the odds? What steps did they take and what have they learned that may be of help to others scaling the ladder today? To discover the answers, I interviewed several women who now or have recently held top in-house legal positions.
