Law Society and AWS joining forces to push for pay equalities for women

9 July 2009

A Law Society survey on gender and ethnicity published this week found that male solicitors earn on average 6% more than females. This year's survey, which has dug far deeper than last year, shows that there is no evidence to substantiate that ethnicity, on its own, explains any part of the variation in pay.

Taking into account no controls for other factors, including grade, PQE, region, size of firm worked in, breaks taken, hours worked and area of law (mainly personal injury, family and conveyancing law) the median pay gap was smallest at associate level which was 10% and highest for salaried partners at 24%. However after taking controls into overall, female solicitors earned, on average, 6% less than male solicitors.

Chairwoman of the Association of Women Solicitors, Clare McConnell, who is leading an equal pay campaign, launched last year, to draw attention to inequalities of pay in the legal sector, explore its causes and suggest potential solutions, says:

"The pay gap suggests not only that many women are not equally rewarded for equal work, but most significantly, that women are not making the progress through the profession that they should. We are lobbying the Law Society to do what it can to make sure that women who want partnership can achieve it. In the current recession if legal practices are to win the war for talent, we need to find ways to make flexible work successful - not just for women, but everyone who is attempting to juggle a career with any other commitments."

Sixty percent of the intake of solicitors were women this year and 43.4% of practising certificates are now held by women. 21.8% of women solicitors are partners, compared to 49% of male solicitors.

Paul Marsh, Law Society President, says "We are committed to working alongside the AWS and we will lobby government and work with employers and most importantly solicitors, to debate the causes and identify steps that we all can take to plug the gap and ensure that women get the recognition they deserve."

Bill Cole, Law Society Research Manager, says:

"This salary survey should be the basis for wider discussion on how to close the pay gap and ensure that women are offered the same opportunities as men – should they want them. This year’s results are consistent with last year’s. There are many ways to do this research and we have found roughly the same result, whichever approach we have deployed. We are investigating working with academics so that we can gain a greater insight into the reasoning behind the gap."

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