Gender Pay Gap in the Legal Profession

When it comes to the gender pay gap, the legal sector continues to lag far behind other industries, with progress remaining stubbornly slow, particularly among larger City firms.

According to new research from Next 100 Years and pay analytics company Gapsquare, hourly pay rates provided by law firms under the statutory gender pay reporting guidelines for 2022 revealed a gender pay gap of 25.4% - a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2017, when mandatory reporting for businesses with 250 or more employees first became mandatory.

The findings echo those of the Law Society, which found that women in the largest law firms earn one-fifth less than men, with the gender pay gap being 50% wider than in the average UK business.

The report also examined gender pay gap reports filed with the UK government, implying that if nothing is done, pay equity between men and women in the legal services sector will not be achieved for another 86 years.

Women lawyers were pessimistic, with 84% believing that true gender pay equality will not occur in their careers and 29% believing it will not occur within the next 100 years.

What can the legal profession do to help close the gender pay gap?

Clearly, more attention to this issue is required, with a focus on the underlying causes of the persistent gender pay gap and how we can make better progress. The legal profession must confront some difficult questions about how it must change if we are to see pay equality in our lifetimes. This article makes four practical recommendations for next steps.

#1 Achieving buy-in at the top

Securing the commitment of senior management is crucial. Change comes from the top, so senior leaders must demonstrate a firm commitment to addressing the problem. At the moment, this simply isn’t happening. Whilst some firms seek to tackle the problem, the majority are not taking it seriously enough.

The management must acknowledge the pay gap exists and that it is their responsibility to close it. Attitudes need to change. There are valid reasons for doing this, particularly given the younger generation's pessimism, which is supported by our research, and the failure to advance pay equality does not bode well for employee retention.

However, trainees/pupils were the only job role in which no respondents believed that true pay equality would be achieved within their career. All junior female lawyers surveyed (at associate, trainee, or pupil level) agreed that the gender pay gap was a concern for them.

Women need to feel secure in their pay, especially as they move up the corporate ladder. Positive feedback regarding pay disparities and the ensuing disillusionment could have an impact on future employee turnover in the sector, as inclusivity is playing an increasingly important role in employee retention.

In light of this, management must commit to addressing the pay gap, and this commitment must be sincere. Leaders must put forth initiatives that are genuinely intended to close the gap, not just symbolic deeds done to garner favourable press. To determine which programmes have the greatest practical impact, this entails looking to other industries, consulting experts, and cooperating as a profession.

#2 Greater transparency

There are several areas where legal organisations can take action and one of the most effective is to improve the transparency of pay grades and career paths. At the beginning of a legal career, there is more transparency on earnings but as lawyers move up, remuneration becomes more opaque.

For instance, our research discovered that bonus payments were a common source of inequality at employers. In their organisation, more than a quarter of respondents didn't think that bonuses were distributed relatively between men and women.

The profession's resistance to allowing employees to openly discuss compensation issues is one of the biggest obstacles to closing the gender pay gap. Employers should make grading systems public and permit employees to discuss pay among themselves in order to address this. Barristers who work for themselves should be more willing to discuss and compare fees.

#3 Valuing performance over experience

The profession also needs to rethink how it evaluates employees. The legal world has a tendency to focus on how much experience an individual has rather than what they can do. We need to shift to looking at performance rather than experience when it comes to determining pay and promotion. People’s abilities must be judged on their knowledge and skills, not just on how many years they have under their belts.

Focusing on service time disproportionately impacts women, who often take maternity leave and then return to work part-time to allow them more time to raise their families. Instead, decisions on pay and promotion must be informed by a person’s ability to do the job.

The profession must also get past outdated viewpoints on various legal disciplines. Men predominate in the highest-paying practise areas, according to comments from survey respondents, which widens the gender pay gap. But it's time to abandon the belief that, for instance, "family law" is the domain of women or that only men are capable of handling intricate fraud cases.

#4 Fair distribution of work

Finally, we must address the uneven distribution of the work. This is going to be an even bigger problem as hybrid working increases the risk that those who spend more time working remotely will be less successful and that those who spend more time in the office will receive the best assignments. This will inevitably affect women with caring responsibilities more.

The fact that the legal profession has one of the biggest gender pay gaps of any industry and that female attorneys cannot be certain they are getting paid what they are worth is intolerable. If we don't address this head-on, we run the risk of discouraging talented, aspiring lawyers from entering a field that doesn't seem to value equality.

It will not be easy and even if all these actions are taken, the gender pay gap will not disappear overnight. It will take several years for the inequalities currently baked into the system to dissipate.

The first step is for senior leaders to acknowledge the existence of the problem, to understand that what they are doing at the moment is not enough and that effort will be required to make inroads to resolving the pay gap and making the kind of progress we can all be proud of.