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Flight from Law: A Competing Risks Model of Departures from Law Firms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Fiona M. Kay
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Abstract

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Building on job satisfaction, occupational segregation, and life course literatures, I analyze temporal dimensions of career mobility within the legal profession with a sample of Canadian lawyers. I use a continuous-time stochastic model of the underlying processes of movement across work settings to examine factors accounting for gender differences in career paths. The findings suggest that women's integration into the legal profession remains marginal: women continue to be underrepresented in law firm partnerships, moving significantly more slowly than men toward these positions. In addition, women exit law firm practice at a rate significantly higher than that of their male counterparts. Empirical evidence also suggests that the rapidly increasing size of entry cohorts to the legal profession has restricted the number of partnerships available to aspiring associates and has hastened the departure of lawyers from law firm practice. I document emerging paths from law and examine causal factors “pushing” lawyers out of law firm practice, as well as those “pulling” them toward other more attractive options.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , 1997 , pp. 301 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

An earlier version was presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Law and Society Association, Montréal, Québec, 7 June 1995. The research reported herein was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#816-96-0035). I am grateful to Joan Brockman, Barbara Mitchell, Clay Mosher, Jay Teachman, Andrew Wister, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. I wish also to thank the staff of the Law Society of Upper Canada for their cooperation and assistance in the collection of these data. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

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