Compensation

Compensation, Gender and Race/Ethnicity and Origination
White male and non-white male equity partners receive higher compensation than white female
and non-white female equity partners at nearly every origination level do. Non-white female
equity partners (NWFEPs) receive the least compensation at each level of origination. White
female equity partners (WFEPs) receive the highest compensation in only two of sixteen
comparisons in the different levels of origination.
Compensation, Gender and Race/Ethnicity and Tenure
White male equity partners comprised nearly two-thirds (66.1%) of the partners 21 years or
more, while white female equity partners comprised one-fourth (25.2%) of the same group. Nonwhite
males (6.8%) and non-white females (1.9%) together represented less than one-tenth of
partners with tenures of 21 years or more.
These findings reflect the continual difficulty of non-white women attorneys to become partners
and to advance in partner tenure. It also may reflect the past 20 years or more in which nonwhite
females had difficulty in becoming partners at law firms.
The findings show increasing racial/ethnic and gender diversity over time.
Of equity partners ten years or less, white females are the largest subgroup (39.7%), followed by
white males (30.8%), non-white females (17.9%), and nonwhite males (11.5%).
The differences in mean compensation between gender/race/ethnic subgroups did not vary
significantly within each level of partnership.
Table 10:
Compensation, Gender, Race/Ethnic by Firm Size
In smaller firms, there are significant differences in mean compensation between gender groups 12
and racial/ethnic groups. Males report higher compensation than females regardless of firm size.
White equity partners report higher compensation than non-white/ethnic partners do for all firm
sizes except for firms with more than 1,000 lawyers. 13 There are significant differences between
gender/ethnic groups for smaller firms, and approaching significance for larger firms.
11 An analysis of variance (ANOVA) on compensation demonstrated significant variation between the subgroups, F
(3, 373) = 5.09, p < .005. A post hoc Tukey test indicated that WMEP mean compensation differed significantly
from WFEP (p