Female lawyers still losing out against men on pay and positions

Women lawyers easily outnumber male lawyers in NSW – but they still aren’t getting anywhere close to the same pay packets.

Cassandra Banks, president of the NSW Law Society.

Women lawyers now easily outnumber male lawyers in NSW – but they still aren’t getting anywhere close to the same pay or as far up the corporate ladder.

Of all NSW solicitors, 54 per cent are female, according to the latest snapshot of the profession produced for the NSW Law ­Society. But 28 per cent of male lawyers reported earning more than $200,000 compared to 19 per cent of females.

About 58 per cent of female solicitors reported earning less than $150,000 compared to just 47 per cent of male solicitors.

The pay gap had been narrowing but has stalled, with 9 per cent more men than women on salaries of $150,000 for the last three years in a row.

The gender pay gap is most pronounced in the younger age groups, where change should have been happening fastest.

In the 24 years or younger bracket, 11 per cent of male lawyers earned $100,001 to $150,000, compared to only 4 per cent of women. The disparity occurs in every age group. In the 35 to 39 age bracket, 38 per cent of men earned more than $200,000, compared to 28 per cent of women.

It is possible the gap could be even greater: there has been a large increase in the proportion of male solicitors who did not want to state their income in the survey: from 3 per cent in 2012 to 14 per cent in 2021.

In seniority within law firms, men make up 65 per cent of all partners or principals compared to 35 per cent or women.

The gap has been decreasing, albeit slowly. A decade ago 76 per cent of partners/principals were male and only 24 per cent female.

There’s good news for those who can stick it out. At least 10 per cent of all solicitors are earning more than $300,000 a year.

Corporate is the place to be. Thirty-six per cent of all corporate legal practitioners reported earning over $200,000 compared to 22 per cent of private practice solicitors and 9 per cent of government legal practitioners.

NSW Law Society president Cassandra Banks said she was “encouraged by results that show some positive movement among private practice leadership positions since last year’s profile”.

“This profile shows a pleasing, if gradual, increase in the ­proportion of women who hold principal or partner roles to 35 per cent (up 2 per cent from last year). In 2013, only 24 per cent of these leadership roles in private practice were female,” Ms Banks said.

She acknowledged the survey had shown a continuing gender pay gap regardless of age, years since admission or sector in which a solicitor is employed.

Ms Banks said the Law Society was committed to supporting law firms to address this imbalance.

“You can have aspirational ideas but you need to commit to targets to drive that gender pay gap closed and there needs to be someone assigned accountability within the firm to actually achieve that.”

She said the traditional way solicitors bill was part of the problem. “What we’re seeing is that male and female solicitors are given different clients, for example, and that will potentially affect how much they’re bringing into the firm. And so then their ­bonuses and salaries are determined on their output.”

Solicitors working in the corporate sector earned more than those in private practice or government, with 54 per cent earning more than $150,000, compared to 33 per cent in private practice and 21 per cent in government.

Lawyers working for the bigger firms earned much than those in smaller practices. For instance, 28 per cent of solicitors in law practices with 50 or more principals reported earning more than $250,000, compared to only 7 per cent of those in practices with one to four principals.

Over the past 15 years the number of female solicitors has grown five-fold, from 4099 to 20,785, while the number of male solicitors has less than doubled, from 9310 to 17,480.