Why Are Women Leaving the Law?
According to a 2006 study by the American Bar Association the percentage of female law school entrants is at 50% and greater parity appears to have been reached within this traditionally masculine field. Yet, women are leaving the law sooner and in greater numbers. Fewer women are able to achieve the benchmarks of success that men have attained within the same field. But who defines success? For my research of the possible disconnect between a woman’s view of success and that of society and the subsequent effect on personal self-esteem, my work takes an in-depth look at a group of established female lawyers who decided to leave their seemingly successful careers for an alternate profession. And so I sought to answer the above question, “why are women leaving the law?”, over the past year. This research constituted the bulk of my Master’s thesis which I am pleased to announce has been accepted. Thank you, thank you!
In the end, I came to two significant conclusions from this research:
1) a significant number of previous female attorney’s ideas of what constitutes success varies greatly from what is typically defined as success by American society
2) The acceptance of a commonly accepted idea of success in lieu of an individually defined one causes dissatisfaction which leads to a loss of self-esteem.
What else did I discover? Here are a few key findings:
*Women put themselves and their needs on the back burner to their physical, emotional, psychological detriment. This is serious. This goes for women in any profession, although law, by its very nature is so utterly consuming that women lawyers are at a higher risk for complete immersion into their professional self, than a woman who does work that is not measured by the billable hour economic model.
*Individuals must define success for themselves instead of defaulting to the socially acceptable definition of what success means for us as women, or, for that matter, what it means for men. We each need to define success for ourselves–no easy task, I realize–so that we feel happy, satisfied and fulfilled in all areas of our life, not just our professional life.
If you would like a copy of my thesis, click here and request it via my contact page.