Leigh Jones has an article entitled Fewer Women Are Seeking Law Degrees in the National Law Journal this week. She cites statistics that since 2002 the percentage of women attending law school has declined every year from 49% in 2002 to 46.9% this year. Of course, the total number of applicants to law school has also declined in the past two years with female applicants for 2006 falling by 7.7% and male applicants by 6.7% (Jones has an interesting graph illustrating this phenomenon in her article). At least partly due to the drop in female applicants, the number of women admitted to law school also decreased in 2006 by 1.7% while the number of men admitted increased by 1.1%. The admissions issue aside, why are women deciding not to apply to law school?

Jones contacted me to ask if I had any ideas based on my work with Ms. JD. After spending a summer working for a law firm and interacting with many law firms that have been overwhelmingly supportive of Ms. JD, I feel certain that the private sector of the legal profession values women lawyers and genuinely desires to retain female attorneys. Still, last year only roughly 18% of firm partners were women. Despite recent efforts to implement policies to retain women, the slow progress is daunting (in 1996, about 14% of partners were women, so more than a decade has brought less than a 4% increase). If fewer talented women enter the profession, then equalizing the numbers will only become more difficult.

Law is a hard sell to women who know they want a lot of time to spend with their families (or who want flexibility and 8-hour days for other reasons). In fact, the legal profession is often highlighted as particularly inhospitable to work-life balance in the spate of recent articles on professional women “opting out”. I remember sitting in my apartment during 1L year trying to read Civ Pro with the TV on in the background. A national news program exploring the “opt-out revolution” was interviewing a woman with impossible law credentials culminating in a Supreme Court clerkship who put her career on hiatus to raise her children. The sum total of what I took away from that interview was not her rationale, which I no longer remember, but rather that she had achieved the pinnacle of law school achievement, and it had not been enough to keep her working as a lawyer. Perhaps nothing could have kept her working if she truly desired to be a full-time mom (and it is of course her personal choice to make). Regardless, I was left with a sinking heart after the show (only part of which I could attribute to the Erie doctrine). I couldn’t shake the conclusion that someone ambitious enough to pursue all the trappings of a perfect legal resume would not “choose” to take several years away from her career if a less either-or option were available. Every working mother juggles her job and her family, but some professions require less circus acrobatics. The negative portrayal of the demands of a legal career may be enough to turn many women away from a JD and toward another graduate degree.

What can law do to attract more women? The flexibility that many women (and men for that matter) desire to simultaneously raise children and maintain a fulfilling career is often impracticable in a profession based on availability. As lawyers, the product we sell is our time. The client needs her lawyer when she needs her. Period. It might be at 3 pm on Wednesday afternoon when your flex-time schedule was supposed to have you home to pick up Suzy Q. by noon. It might be Friday night at 5 pm with a request that will keep you in the office until Monday morning. Perhaps if you are a certain type of lawyer, the demands on your time will be less capricious and your schedule more predictable, but all in all, lawyers are hired to represent clients, and clients dictate the terms. Many women will still choose to apply to law school because law is intellectually stimulating and offers membership in a profession that has and will continue to change and shape our society. Still, law pays a high price if it loses those who demand a profession that leaves more room for a personal life, especially if most of those people are women.