Women in the workplace have been making slow progress toward receiving the same pay and benefitting from the same opportunities as men. Will the current dismantling of many DEI programs put the brakes on gender equality progress? A study of the most important deals in elite private law firms offers hope for the future.
As more politicians and courts turn against Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) programs, more firms and organizations are proactively dropping these programs to avoid future lawsuits. How will this trend impact the prospect for future gender equality in the workplace?
A team of legal scholars from Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Toronto addressed this question through the prism of key leadership positions in elite private law firms. Specifically, they analyzed the leadership teams of the most prestigious deals in six top firms to measure the progress of women attorneys in terms of influence and authority.
Their research focused specifically on “newsworthy deals”—the tiny fraction of a firm’s deals that the firm wants to draw attention to, believing such deals with burnish their reputation. These newsworthy deals are the cream of the firm’s crop, and the leadership teams of those newsworthy deals are the most powerful deal teams in the firm.
The research focused on 10,000 deals deemed newsworthy by six of the most elite private law firms in the U.S. The data was drawn from a database of online press releases issued between 2013 and 2023 by the firms. From each press release, the researchers were able to collect information on the type of deal and the names of the lawyers on the deal teams. Further research into the biographies of the named attorneys yielded such information as gender and education.
This study showed that in the 10 years between 2013 and 2023, the number of deal teams that included women doubled from 42% in 2013 to 78% in 2023. In 2013, 19 percent of the members of deal teams were women. By 2023, 31% of these deal teams were women.
Most deal teams are small and feature a clearly delineated hierarchy. One attorney will have the top spot on the team, with attorneys filling the number two spot, number three spot, and so forth. For their study, the researchers separated the deal team hierarchy into the top four spots, with a 5+ spot covering the remainder of the deal team attorneys.
Drilling down into the distribution of women among the top five slots in these leadership teams, the researchers found that women made up 25% of the attorneys in the four top spots of these deal teams, including 19% of the attorneys in the top spot, 23% of the attorneys in the second spot, 28% of the attorneys in the third spot, 30% of the attorneys in the fourth spot, and 32% of the attorneys in the 5th or lower spot.
Three important criteria influence selection to leadership roles on prestigious deal teams: partnership status, experience, and education. Since the top two slots are mostly filled by partners, fewer women were eligible during the period of our study. In addition, men would tend to have seniority over women during this period. Putting just these two factors together—partnerships and seniority—the number of women in the top two slots was actually higher than expected by the researchers.
The education variable favored women. Among all attorneys, men appeared to have stronger educational pedigrees than women (for example, in these firms more men than women attended the top 6 law schools in the U.S.), while women had stronger pedigrees among the attorneys in the number one or two slots of deal teams.
The data also showed that women associates were more likely to be assigned to deal teams than male associates, indicating a growing potential for the future given the importance of experience.
In the context of the growing number of women joining elite law firms, becoming partners, joining deal teams, and being assigned steadily higher positions in these deal teams, the researchers conclude that women are indeed climbing the ladder of deal leadership teams and thus gaining in their firms.
In sum, the researchers argue, that women already in leadership positions as well as those aspiring to leadership positions have laid the groundwork for future power. Junior women attorneys can thus foresee themselves becoming top leaders in their firms in the future … whether or not DEI programs survive.
The DEI programs in every industry and sector are under threat. However, organizational leaders need not conclude that advances in gender equity will come to a standstill in the shadow of potential lawsuits. The context of newsworthy deals in the private law sector demonstrates that a growing number of women are already in a position to move to higher levels of authority. The positive trajectory in the legal profession highlighted in this study will be replicated in other industries, as long as women with the same experience and credentials as their male counterparts continue to be given the same opportunities to take leadership roles in the organization’s most prestigious activities.
Tracey George’s profile at the University of Vanderbilt
https://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/?pid=tracey-george
Mitu Gulati’s profile at the University of Virginia
https://www.law.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/gmg4n/1169041
Albert Yoon’s profile at the University of Toronto
https://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/albert-yoon
George, Tracey E., and Gulati, Mitu and Yoon, Albert, The Power Five: The Making of Newsworthy Deal Teams (February 7, 2024). Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2024-13, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2024-7. (February 7, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4717669 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4717669
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