A surprising piece of research suggests that women are on the trajectory to match men’s roles in large legal deals in the next decade. This optimistic news comes from a study by a team of legal academics who scrutinised law firm press releases related to 10,000 transactions from 2013 through 2023, in order to analyze the representation of women on deal teams. View the paper.
Observations from the study reveal that although women led deals only 19% of the time, their involvement on broader deal teams exhibited increased and significant numbers. A key indicator of this progress is the rise in the number of women announced in deal leadership teams – upwards from just 42% in 2013 to 78% in 2023. Also, general representation of women on deal teams rose from 19% in 2013 to 31% in 2023.
The results suggest women may not currently match men in deal team representation, but they are indeed getting equal or better opportunities to get involved in deal teams, in relation to their representation within law firms. This is significant, considering that women representation within leadership ranks at law firms increased from 20% in 2013 to almost 28% in 2023, according to data from the National Association for Law Placement.
Co-author of the study, Tracey George, vice provost for faculty affairs and professional education at Vanderbilt University Law School, expressed optimism in women’s success and the prospects of the next generation of female lawyers surpassing the current generation. He projected that women will achieve a parity with men in leading deals within the next 10 years.
If the trajectory of women’s representation over the past decade continues through 2033, then women will constitute just over half of deal leadership positions. However, George also considered the possibility of decelerating progress as women near parity, which could potentially extend the period to attain parity to 15 years.
Despite this promising trend, certain challenges linger in Big Law for women. A fall report from the American Bar Association highlighted an urgent need to offer more support to female lawyers with children in the legal profession. The report revealed that mothers were more than twice likely as fathers to feel having children negatively impacted their legal career. Read more about this here.
A notable shift in tone from the researchers followed pushback from women in law firms to a 2021 analysis by the same academics which found that women represented fewer than 10% of lead lawyers on key corporate transactions. This assessment was mainly driven by SEC data which only included one or two senior lawyers and M&A deals. Consequently, the researchers broadened their perspective by studying press releases from several prestigious law firms, such as Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Hunton Andrews Kurth, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Shearman & Sterling, Sullivan & Cromwell, and White & Case.
The pioneering paper reveals that women tend to appear as the third, fourth or fifth lawyer mentioned on a deal team, possibly indicating a glass ceiling. However, the authors argue the data suggests women are ascending the hierarchy and are likely to lead more deal teams in the future as women partners gain more experience. Women who led deals were found in roughly equal proportions to their positions within the firm. This implies that progress in women’s status at law firms is in line with their titles implying that women are not given disproportionate lower positions.
Despite the study’s optimism about women’s progress, a preliminary review of Black lawyers’ representation on deal teams painted a less cheerful picture, with Black lawyers constituting fewer than 3% of deal team leaders and their representation decreasing in the overall team. The researchers plan to carry out more investigations into Black lawyers’ roles on deal teams for future studies.
Read more here.