Rate of part-time work among lawyers drops for third year

Although nearly all large law firms make part-time schedules available to their experienced lawyers, the percentage of lawyers working part-time continues to remain in single digits; in 2013 just 6.1% of lawyers were working part-time compared to 6.2% in 2012. Most of these part-time lawyers, almost 70%, were women. This reflects the fact that women are much more likely to be working part-time than men. Among women lawyers overall, 12.9% worked part-time; among female partners, 10.5% were working part-time; and among women associates the figure was 9.5%. Part-time work was highest among female "other lawyers" (counsel, senior attorneys, and staff attorneys) at 29.6%. This contrasts with a rate of just 2.8% among all male lawyers. All the figures for women are down from 2012; for example, the 12.9% overall usage rate among women compares with 13.5% in 2012. The figures for men overall, in contrast, rose just a hair from 2.7% to 2.8%. These are among the findings of the most recent analyses of the National Association for Law Placement® Directory of Legal Employers, the annual compendium of employer information published by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). The 2013-2014 Directory comprises listings from primarily large law firms and includes part-time use information for over 1,000 individual law offices and firms and over 113,000 lawyers. The lack of part-time lawyers at law firms distinguishes private law firm practice from both the U.S. workforce as a whole and from more defined segments of the workforce. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 13.7% of employed individuals during 2012 usually worked part-time, as did a similar percentage (13.1%) of those employed in professional specialties as a whole (e.g., architects, engineers, lawyers, and physicians). These rates contrast markedly with the 6.1% rate among lawyers at major law firms. In 2013, part-time schedules were nearly universally available, either as an affirmative policy or on a case-by-case basis, but as has been the case since NALP first compiled this information in 1994, very few lawyers are working on a part-time basis, even though the percentage of offices allowing part-time schedules has increased from 86% over that time period to nearly 100% in most markets. In 1994, just 2.4% of partners and associates were working part-time. By 2013, the number of lawyers working part-time stood at 6.1%, after reaching 6.4% in 2010 and dropping to 6.2% in 2011 and 2012. Likewise, although associates continue to be more likely to be working part-time than partners, part-time work among associates has increased only incrementally, from 4.0% in 1994 to 5.3% in 2010 and then declining in subsequent years to 4.7% in 2013. The rate of part-time work is lowest among partners, at 3.4%, and up from just 1.2% in 1994. The rate was as high as 3.6% in 2010. Other lawyers, such as of counsel and staff attorneys, show the highest rate of part-time work, almost 20%, compared with about 17% in 2006, the first year with comparable information. In 2013, nearly all associates working part-time (90.6%) are women; among partners working part-time, 63.1% are women. It is worth noting that, while the distribution of part-time associates among men and women has changed little over the seven years that NALP has compiled this information, the distribution of part-time partners among men and women has shifted more notably - in 2006 almost 72% of part-time partners were women; the 2013 figure is the lowest over the seven-year period. "The utilization of part-time schedules for all lawyers has dropped now for three years in a row, and it has dropped for both partners and associates. Given the direction the data is heading, I feel confident calling this a post-recessionary trend at this point," noted James Leipold, NALP's Executive Director. "We have also seen utilization drop for women, and actually rise just slightly for men. That is a bit surprising. Of course women continue to make up the vast majority of lawyers in large law firms who utilize part-time schedules. What we don't know from the data we have is anything about causation. We can identify the trend but we cannot say why it is happening. It may be that in this economic climate there is a perceived pressure to not utilize the part-time option. There may also be economic concerns for families that are driving more lawyers to choose to work full-time. But these are just two possible hypotheses out of many. Law has always been an outlier among the professions for part-time utilization, but with nearly universal availability at this point, it is surprising to see utilization among large law firm lawyers falling even further. One other finding worth emphasizing," noted Leipold, "is that the disparity in utilization between men and women, while still vast, is gradually closing." NALP's most recent data also reveal that part-time use varies a great deal by geographic location. The three largest markets -- Chicago, New York City, and Washington, DC -- account for one-third of the lawyers reflected in the Directory, and show a sharp dichotomy with respect to part-time lawyers. Part-time partners are much more common in both Chicago and Washington, D.C. -- at 3.5% and 4.4%, respectively -- than in New York City (1.7%) -- as are women partners working part-time (about 11% in Chicago and 15% in Washington, D.C. versus 6.7% in New York City). Part-time associates are also more common in Chicago (5.0%) and Washington, DC (5.8%) compared with New York City (3.9%). The percentages of women associates working part-time in Chicago and Washington, DC are 10.1% and 11.6%, respectively, compared with 7.8% in New York City. In Chicago and Washington, DC, about one-fifth of other lawyers were working part-time, but in New York, not quite 14% were doing so. The percentage of female other lawyers working part-time was also among the highest in Chicago at almost 40%. Looking at all cities, the presence of part-time partners varies even more. For example, part-time partners are most common in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, with 8% of partners in those cities working part-time. Part-time women partners are most common in Seattle as well, along with Cincinnati and San Francisco. But in nine cities, fewer than 2% of partners are working part-time, and in two of these cities no male partners at all were reported as working part-time. Cities also vary with respect to part-time associates, from less than 2% in Tampa and Houston to 9% or more in Portland, and San Francisco. No male associates were reported as working part-time in eight cities, including Charlotte and Columbus. The highest percentages of women associates working part-time were reported in Portland and Columbus at about 17% each. The rate of part-time work among other lawyers reached almost half in Seattle, but the higher figures were generally found in cities collectively reporting relatively small numbers of other lawyers. Five states, or portions of states not covered by the cities above, had sufficient information for a parallel analysis. Following the national patterns, all had higher percentages of part-time associates than part-time partners. The percentage of partners working part-time was highest in Tennessee, at 5.3%, as was the percentage of women partners working part-time, at 18.9%. Connecticut had the highest percentage of part-time associates at 8.4%, and the highest percentage of women associates working part-time at 13%. Entry-level lawyers in search of part-time schedules found their options more limited. Nationally, somewhat less than half of offices that offered a part-time option precluded entry-level associates from using that arrangement. Among the largest firms, about one-third of offices did not make part-time schedules available to entry-level associates. Among the cities with at least 25 listings in the Directory, offices in Boston and the San Jose area were most likely to make part-time schedules available to entry-level associates. Published: Tue, Mar 11, 2014