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Halting The Profession's Female Brain Drain While Increasing The Provision Of Legal Services To The Poor: A Proposal To Revamp And Expand Emeritus Attorney Programs, Claudine Pease-Wingenter

Claudine Pease-Wingenter

Although gender parity has essentially been achieved in the law school and associate ranks for a while, women overall still only represent about a third of the entire legal profession. There are multiple reasons for this continuing underrepresentation, but a significant contributor is the difficulty in simultaneously balancing new careers and young families.

Most lawyers enter the profession in their late twenties. About the same time, women's fertility begins to wane. As a result, there is a lot of pressure for female lawyers to start families while they are still relatively new in their careers. Because women continue to bear …