Gender Pay Gap Amongst Lawyers - A potential reason

After reading Workplace Law Examiner Professor Marcia McCormick's article on legal industry pay gaps, I have some thoughts and observations.

While I have not seen the data, as a practicing lawyer I have seen first hand that male lawyers in much larger numbers start their own practices. I can also say from personal experience that some of the best lawyers that I know are women.

This is just spit-balling, but perhaps the pay gap comes from women being less likely to hang their own shingle.

Here's my logic.

If it is true that women are less likely to start their own practice than men, employers know either objectively or intuitively that women are less likely to leave their positions as associates if they don't get raises, even if they are getting paid less than men who are their inferiors or equals as lawyers.

While I doubt that there is a conspiracy to pay women lawyers less, being able to safely do so would be justification to many, if not most legal employers. Let's face it, large legal employers typically favor profits. If the profit-per-partner to associate ratio can be increased by paying female associates less, then won't most partners vote for that? Even the female partners?

Whether it's a higher threshold for enduring unpleasant situations, or perhaps a realization that it may be more difficult for a female attorney to get started in a solo practice (although most of the female attorneys I know who have started their own firms have thrived), as long as female attorneys start their own firms with less frequency than their male counterparts, my assumption is that the gender pay gap may never close.

Just a theory, and one that I hope will inspire further discussion and debate.