An Analysis of Gender Wage Gap and Satisfaction in Private Law Practice

While women have made considerable strides in terms of representation in the workplace, discrepancies by gender still exist with regard to women's professional satisfaction and wages. The field of legal private practice is one such example where female lawyers have increased in number but still do not earn commensurately with men and often do not report satisfaction levels as high as men do. Women are more likely than men to remain in lower level, less remunerative legal positions within private practice, or to move out of private practice all together into legal sectors that are less prestigious such as government or the non-profit sector. Gender differences in workplace satisfaction and pay for lawyers in private practice are closely examined in this study to determine what can predict various components of satisfaction as well as wages, and what accounts for differences in their distribution between men and women. This dissertation begins with a brief overview of gender pay inequities in a variety of fields, followed by a detailed review of prior literature on female representation and wage inequity by gender in the legal field. The literature review is followed by a recommendation for future research on the gender wage gap among lawyers in private practice. This research utilizes the "After the JD" (AJD; After the Juris Doctor) data set (Garth et al., n.d.), a longitudinal survey tracking nearly 5,000 law graduates admitted to the bar in 2000 across a 10-year period. This recent, nationally representative source of data contains a variety of educational, personal, and job-related variables on lawyers to better understand their progression in the field. Quantitative techniques including least squares linear regression and a modified decomposition analysis are used to investigate the relationships of human and social capital, family situation, personal aspirations, and discrimination to the gender pay gap, as well as how these gaps can be understood across time. Analyses are conducted for race and ethnicity within gender as sample size permits to better understand how pay inequalities operate at the intersection of multiple demographic subgroups. As a secondary component to the study, lawyer satisfaction is examined according to gender and race and ethnicity within gender, particularly as satisfaction relates to income differences. Factor analysis is utilized to create condensed satisfaction composites, which are then used as dependent variables in a series of regressions. This research aims to contribute to the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion by examining pay differentials and satisfaction differences by demographic subgroup in the prestigious and lucrative field of private law practice. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]