Why Don’t Lawyers Get Equal Pay for Equal Work?

The legal industry grossly underpays women and minorities, and change is long overdue.

“You’ve got to work twice as hard to be considered just as good.”

If you are a minority in America, you have probably heard some variation of this from your parents, teachers, and role models. You have to be more educated, credentialled, and experienced just to be taken seriously. We understand this to be true because even when we achieve academic and professional success, we are still underpaid and undervalued for no apparent reason other than the color of our skin.

The legal profession is a prime example of this problem. Lawyers are among the least diverse professions in the country, and grossly underpay both women and minorities. There is effectively an income penalty for anyone who is not a white man, which translates to tens of thousands of dollars a year in unpaid income. This penalty is double jeopardy for minorities because it is coupled with the systemic preference for white men, stopping them from getting a foot in the door.

We live in a nation where minority job applicants who “whiten” their resumes by removing all references to race receive substantially more callbacks. We live in a nation where Black and Asian job applicants can double their chances of getting a callback by removing resume information indicating race. We live in a nation where, by listing hobbies typically associated with being white, such as skiing, kayaking, or hiking, you improve your chances of being hired.

Even just having a white-sounding name gives an applicant an edge over someone with a Black-sounding name who has an extra eight years of work experience. For minorities, it is clear that being (or seeming) white pays big dividends to even getting an interview.

Adding insult to injury, once you get a job, regardless of your education level, a white man is likely to get paid more money for the same work. So, if you’re not a white man, then you have to be better and do significantly more to have the opportunity to make the same income.

This presents three main problems: 1) white men are paid more despite having the same or fewer credentials and experience; 2) there is scant reporting to see exactly how much women and minorities are underpaid; and 3) the legal profession is doing a disservice to underrepresented communities by not including them, and even when they do, not paying them fairly.

The legal profession is self-regulating, so it is uniquely equipped to address these systemic problems on its own. Instead, the legal profession has failed women and minorities because it continues to perpetuate profession-wide pay discrimination.

White male lawyers can expect to earn between 25K and 48K more than women or minority lawyers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) provides some data to get a glimpse of the pay gap. In 2018, BLS estimated that there were approximately 1.12 million people in “legal occupations,” of which nearly 72% were lawyers. The data does not include self-employed professionals, such as solo-practitioner lawyers.

Across all legal occupations, White men bring home substantially more income per week, for the same work, than other demographics. For those interested in the underlying BLS data, please visit the BLS website here.

In 2019, white men brought in $731 per week more than Black men, and $520 more than Hispanic and Latino men. However, white men brought in $103 per week less than Asian men.

For clarity, Asian men may not be doing better than white men in terms of income. This issue may be an effect of using a national median. Asian Americans are more likely to live in a more expensive area, which necessitates higher wages, driving the median upward. Meanwhile, white men make up a substantial portion of the population nearly everywhere in America, regardless of the cost of living. This may be a considerable factor in the higher relative wages for Asian men.

The difference is even starker with women. The gap between white men and Asian women in 2019 was $527. However, the difference between white men and white women was $830, and between Black women was $820. The difference between white men and Hispanic or Latino women was $942 per week.

Assuming 50 workweeks a year, white men made $36,550 more than Black men and $26,000 more than Hispanic and Latino men.

For white, Black, and Hispanic women, the pay difference between them and the median white man is over $41,000 per year for similar work.

Fundamentally, this data tells us that the “median” white man, and everyone who makes more than him, does substantially better than women and minorities for no apparent reason other than his gender and his race.

Law firms are a significant part of the problem but we can’t get the data on pay demographics.

Law firms, especially larger firms, perpetuate this pay gap. A study by the National Association for Law Placement found that white male lawyers make more money than other lawyers as firms grow in size. In particular, white male attorneys often had average and median incomes exceeding other groups by thousands of dollars per year. Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of this issue nationally is difficult to capture because there is nothing requiring legal businesses to report their compensation practices.

In fact, the United States does not require any employers to report information about how they pay employees by race and gender.

This could have finally changed when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission briefly had the authority to demand this data from businesses to investigate pay discrimination. On February 1, 2016, the EEOC received approval for the collection of “Component 2” data, which included information on the race, age, and sex of employees and their hours worked and wages. The data collection was supposed to start for the 2017 tax year and would be due on March 18 of 2018. Unfortunately, in August 2017, the Office of Management and Budget illegally issued a stay on the data collection. After a lawsuit ending in March 2019, the EEOC collected some data for 2017 and 2018. Ultimately, the program was canceled in 2019.

Since there is no one to demand the data, the legal industry will likely continue with its insufficient efforts to meaningfully address the pay gap.

What can we do?

The data clearly shows that the legal profession pays more money if you are a white man. The data also reinforces a fundamental flaw in the legal profession: women and minorities are grossly under-represented. These are not problems that can be fixed overnight, but there are a few things that everyone can do.

First and foremost, we need to pay it forward. The legal profession is one big exercise in gatekeeping. To fight this problem we need to promote, encourage, and help women and minorities in becoming lawyers. There is an incalculable value to just having someone who has been through the system telling you that you can do it as well.

Second, we need to demand transparency from our employers. Employers can do the bare minimum by providing an annual report on general pay disparities. We can ensure that we are being paid equally only if we demand transparency and accountability.

Finally, we must demand scholarship programs and other funding that support women and minorities who are just getting to the starting line. Law schools and law firms must put their money where their mouths are. Schools and firms cannot value diversity when they do not substantively try to promote it. A pamphlet and a photo op are not diversity and inclusion. They need to walk the walk.

We should not have to work twice as hard to be considered just as good. We deserve equal pay for equal work.