An interesting piece popped up today on The XX Factor, How the Billable Hour Hurts Women and Families. There is not much I can disagree with regarding how the structure of billable hours hurts women and families. However I did disagree with the author in that half of graduating law school classes are women and that women make up half of the top class rankings. Every law school I applied to has more male students than female. This is also true of the top five law schools according to the current rankings via U.S. World News and Reports. I'm positive that if I were to continue analyzing the data for the rest of top fifty schools I would find the same. Is there a law school out there where women outnumber the men?
One of the questions I have for my number 2 school is how they are tackling female retention (which is significantly higher than male retention). There is also a disproportion in faculty with 75% men for this school. I know that other schools have better statistics regarding these areas but I can't help but disagree that women make up half the class and half the top rankings. It has even been said that the LSAT is biased toward the way men think.
As a woman I am concerned about these statistics, what they mean and how I fit into the larger picture. The billable hour is a huge aspect of the job and possibly a determining factor in why women choose to have children during law school and not afterward. Interesting issues to ponder over while I still wait to hear from other schools.
Labels: billable hour, female law students, LSAT
