Flight from Law: A Competing Risks Model of Departures from Law Firms

Abstract

Building on job satisfaction, occupational segregation, and life course literatures, I analyze temporal dimensions of career mobility within the legal profession with a sample of Canadian lawyers. I use a continuous-time stochastic model of the underlying processes of movement across work settings to examine factors accounting for gender differences in career paths. The findings suggest that women's integration into the legal profession remains marginal: women continue to be underrepresented in law firm partnerships, moving significantly more slowly than men toward these positions. In addition, women exit law firm practice at a rate significantly higher than that of their male counterparts. Empirical evidence also suggests that the rapidly increasing size of entry cohorts to the legal profession has restricted the number of partnerships available to aspiring associates and has hastened the departure of lawyers from law firm practice. I document emerging paths from law and examine causal factors “pushing” lawyers out of law firm practice, as well as those “pulling” them toward other more attractive options.