Biglaw

The Largest Law Firms With The Most Women Lawyers (2021)

An important ranking to show which firms are helping women achieve successful careers in the law.

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Earlier today, thanks to the recently released National Law Journal 500 ranking, we found out which U.S.-centric Biglaw firms were the biggest of them all in terms of headcount. As a companion piece to the NLJ 500, we’ll now delve into the NLJ Women’s Scorecard, a ranking of the percentage of female attorneys and percentage of female partners at the largest 350 firms in the country.

For this ranking, equity and nonequity partners were counted as partners, while nonpartner or “other” figures include special counsel, of counsel, and staff attorneys. Temporary and contract attorneys aren’t included in the count. For a tie, the higher rank is awarded to the firm with more female equity partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have brought about bad news for work-life balance but despite these challenges, it seems that women thrived at law firms in 2020, and were actively recruited and retained through it all. From the National Law Journal:

Corporate legal departments are calling for more diversity in the legal industry—not just requesting it but actually requiring law firms to measure and monitor their diversity and inclusion of women and minorities. Clients want to know that the firms who serve them are inclusive—or they will not engage them. As a result, firms are increasingly measuring and reporting these important statistics, and paying attention to their performance.

The result: This year’s Women in Law Scorecard rankings includes 28 law firms that did not participate in last year’s ranking. And three firms new to the survey entered straight into the top 10.

Without further ado, here is the NLJ Women’s Scorecard Top 10 for 2021:

  1. Berry Appleman & Leiden
  2. Fragomen
  3. Kubicki Draper
  4. Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan
  5. Littler Mendelson
  6. Constangy Brooks Smith & Prophete
  7. Hanson Bridgett
  8. Shipman & Goodwin
  9. Manning Gross + Massenburg
  10. FordHarrison

You may be wondering where the largest, namebrand Biglaw firms appear on this list. While the majority of the top 30 firms on the scorecard have a headcount of about 300 or less, there were some exceptions, with Fragomen, Littler, Jackson Lewis, Ogletree, Ropes & Gray, Lewis Brisbois, Gordon Rees, Davis Wright Tremaine, Shook Hardy, Wilson Elser, and Baker McKenzie all making an appearance in the top 30.

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Congratulations to all of the firms that succeeded in boosting their ranks in this year’s Women’s Scorecard by placing women in leadership roles and fostering a pipeline of female and diverse attorneys.

You can check out the rest of the rankings here.

The 2021 Women in Law Scorecard [National Law Journal]
More Firms Are Measuring Gender Diversity, and Some Have a Great Story to Tell [National Law Journal]
The NLJ 500: Our 2021 Survey of the Nation’s Largest Law Firms [National Law Journal]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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