After I posted yesterday about the NAWL survey, I couldn't sleep.  Despite what I suggested in my original post, I am concerned about the findings, actually deeply concerned (well, except about the rainmaking finding).

That concern leads me to this question:  Do we have a pipeline problem?

One of the main premises upon which the NAWL report is based is that for more than two decades women have graduated from law schools and started careers in private practice at about the same rate as men.  Yet, we still haven't achieved anywhere close to parity with men at the tops of private practice, not by any measure including promotion, pay, leadership and business development.

I wonder if it isn't time to question the idea that we don't have a pipeline problem.   We know that 48% of first and second year associates are women in the typical firm. However, what we don't know is what, if any, disparity there is among the career goals of those women and the men that work along side them.  What percentage of those female first years have no intention of making partner at their firm or at any firm?  What percentage of those female first years were hired by the firm with no intention of ever making them partners?  What is the disparity between those numbers and the same numbers for the male first years?  Depending on the answers to those questions, we may find that, in fact, women are starting off at much lower numbers of potential-partners from the get go.

Why, you may ask, would I speculate that the numbers may be different for males and females starting off in law firms?  I am actually not positive that they would be different and have only asked based on personal experience as I haven't researched this question.  However, the answers may be anything from what will sound very sexist and stereotypical to what may be very practical.  Some potential reasons:

• Perhaps law firms recruit and hire women based on a separate set of factors, albeit unconsciously. 
  • For example, maybe they look for hard-working, non-threatening women while looking for hard-charging (which I think is different than hard-working) charismatic, outgoing men.
  • Perhaps law firms care more about grades and law review when it comes to women and more about rain-making potential when it comes to men (which may have more to do with likeability, communication skills, etc).
• Maybe the women that go to law firms are going there for a job and not so much a career, something to pay the loans off and get some experience but also a stepping-stone to something else, like business or politics.
• Perhaps more women that go to law firms do not see themselves being the primary breadwinner in their [future] family and so aren't attracted by the money and power to begin with.
• Maybe the women are better at faking a desire to be in it for the long haul where the men are more transparent -- leading to more women being hired that actually have no intention of making partner and less of those same-minded men getting through the gate.

In addition to the above, I also think there are institutional factors that may cause a woman to be less ambitious in the law firm context than her male colleagues.  For example, she may not see any role models or have adequate mentorship and so may doubt her ability to make partner much earlier than a man may have those same doubts.  She may have limited opportunities based on the old boys network, etc.  Maybe the women that go to law firms are more competent lawyers and more focused on their legal work than the other intangibles that matter on the partnership track. 

However, the question I am asking is whether there is a more basic difference between the men and women that start out at firms -- are their goals not aligned before all of the office politics and firm structures start working against the women?