A PERSISTENT PROBLEM - Women lawyers leave Am Law 200 firms for “thoroughly depressing” reasons, such as a lack of support from the firm in providing maternity leave or child care and the stress of meeting billable-hour targets, a new survey from legal intelligence provider Leopard Solutions finds. As Law.com’s Brenda Sapino Jeffreys reports, the concerns are so deep that only 58% of the nearly 200 Am Law 200 women lawyers who participated in the survey would recommend a legal career to their daughter. “For those who said no, the reasons cited were that they did not like what they were still experiencing—sexism. The same experiences their mothers had in the ’80s,” the report said.
TEMP JOBS? - The legal industry at large notched another month of dependable hiring in April, according to a Friday report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which indicated a slight increase over March at 1,179,400 total positions. As Law.com’s Dan Roe reports, the minor uptick marked another month of consistency for a sector of the US job market that has more than rebounded from the impact of the pandemic, even if uncertainty in Q3 of 2022 cut 13,000 positions over two months. Since the end of 2022, the legal sector has maintained 20,000 more jobs than it had at the beginning of 2020. However, the short-term stability contrasts with analysts’ predictions of a recession beginning in Q3, calling into question whether Big Law and the legal industry may hold onto the lion’s share of head count gains achieved since 2020.
