Biglaw

The Biglaw Firms Where Women Are Most Satisfied With Their Jobs (2022)

What does it take to cultivate job satisfaction at a law firm? In a new report from BTI Consulting, associates pointed out exactly what they wanted from and valued in their work lives, and which firms were the best at committing to their overall happiness.

According to BTI, Biglaw associates are looking for these eight core activities from their firms when it comes to their overall professional happiness:

• Commitment to helping associates in their career
• Specific action to help develop a career path
• Access to training they need
• Good mentoring
• Optimism about growing within their firm
• High levels of job satisfaction
• Being well paid
• Having at least one partner watching out for them

After going evaluating 4,000 responses, BTI found that 147 Biglaw firms did the best job when it came to associate satisfaction. Sounds nice, right? It turns out that women aren’t nearly as satisfied at their Biglaw firms. When separated by gender, women associates ranked just 122 firms as the best for overall job satisfaction. In fact, women rated their job satisfaction as 13.5 percentage points lower than that of their male counterparts, and 62% of them saw their firms imparting “limited or no commitment to helping them in their careers” (compared to 48% of men). Oof.

Some firms, however, really stood out above the rest when it came to satisfying their female associates. Which ones are committed to helping women in their careers and developing their career paths?

Women associates named 97 firms as being on top of the game when it came to helping them in their careers by creating robust women’s initiatives and offering resources and guidance for women in the profession. Only nine of those firms were ranked as being the best of the best when in helping women to foster their careers. Here they are:

• Baker Donelson
• Fenwick & West
• Fisher Phillips
• Greenberg Traurig
• Jones Day
• Littler
• Milbank
• Polsinelli
• Wilson Elser

Relatedly, women associates seem to think their firms are really slacking when it comes to helping them develop their career paths. Just 22% of women associates said they saw “robust and specific action” from their firms in terms of cultivating their career paths. While 80 firms were named as excelling in this area, these seven rose to the top. Here they are:

• Baker Donelson
• Fenwick & West
• Fisher Phillips
• Greenberg Traurig
• Jones Day
• Milbank
• Wilson Elser

Congratulations to these firms on their efforts to help women associates nurture and develop their careers in Biglaw. This is an accomplishment that’s incredibly important to diversity in the legal profession, and we’d love to see even more of it. Maybe your firm will be one of the “best of the best” next year.

Women Associates Name 122 Law Firms as Best at Cultivating Women’s Highest Job Satisfaction [BTI Consulting]

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Staci 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.