Are Women Leaving Big Law Because of COVID?

I don’t know about you, but I really need a break from the dizzying coverage of our next Supreme Court justice. For weeks, I feel I’ve been living/breathing Amy Coney Barrett, parsing what she means for feminism, motherhood and fashion.

Permit me to leave Amyland and shift to another piece of depressing news: Women’s progress on the work front. The bottom line is that women aren’t just stuck on the work front—they’re expected to fall further behind. A lot further behind. That’s from McKinsey/LeanIn 2020 report on women in the workplace.

The reason is COVID, COVID, COVID. According to the report, women are at serious risk for burnout, working double shifts as they juggle work and family demands like never before. (The report covers 317 companies and more than 40,000 people, including 45 in-depth interviews.)

You’ve probably been hearing about women’s increased burdens during the pandemic, but what’s new and troubling is this: “More than one in four women are contemplating what many would have considered unthinkable just six months ago: downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce completely.” And for women with children, that number is one in three.

The report puts the bad news another way: “The COVID-19 crisis could set women back by half a decade,” resulting in “far fewer women in leadership—and far fewer women on track to be future leaders. All the progress we’ve seen over the past six years could be erased.”

Let that sink in: Progress erased.

As we know, that progress has been hard-fought and slow for women in Big Law. It’s only in the last year or so that women finally hit the 20% equity partnership mark, even though women have constituted about 50% of students at top law schools for three decades. (Interestingly, the growth of female equity partners parallels that of senior women in corporate America. The study finds that female representation in the C-suite grew from 17% to 21% from 2015 to 2020.)

So what happens if a quarter of women in law firms start dropping out or put themselves out of the partnership track? Do we go back to that 15-16% equity quagmire where women were stuck forever?

“It is an acute concern of the women executives and legal professionals I work with,” says consultant Brande Stellings, who advises firms and companies on gender and culture issues. “As the pandemic goes on, women face continuing uncertainty over schooling and day care, and that pressure typically falls on them. The current pace may not be sustainable.”

But not all women believe COVID will set women back. In fact, one senior in-house counsel tells me the opposite: “I have not seen any woman leave. Women have been doing well and have adapted. This is a perfect environment for a women’s leadership style. It has been harder on men.” She adds, “Why would a woman leave when the economy is in such a bad state?”

Indeed, whether a woman quits depends on how vital her income is to the family. If she’s the main breadwinner, I’d bet her spouse would be supportive of her career—and likely has been, way before the pandemic.

But what happens if both spouses have comparable careers? Or if the husband makes more?

In those cases, the bets are off. It still seems too early to tell but there’s general nervousness that women will fall behind because of the pandemic.

“We are just starting the analysis but I would not be surprised if we see women deciding to leave the legal profession,” says Roberta Liebenberg, who’s authoring an upcoming American Bar Association study with Stephanie Scharf on the effects of the pandemic. Liebenberg isn’t saying what the findings are but she struck an ominous note: “Many firms have not adjusted their billable hour requirements, which seems pretty hard to sustain if you have no child care or home schooling.”

Well, I can’t wait to read that report. Something tells me it won’t be bright and sunny.

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Twitter: @lawcareerist