The Magic Circle’s gender pay gap results are in for 2023, and (spoiler alert), the gaps have got worse in some metrics
Ahead of my synopsis of the results, I will note that these results are fairly synonymous of the wider legal market as a whole, and the Magic Circle are some of the better performers here, but the concerning point with this is that, even the better performers are still a long way off parity. I’ll briefly list out the ‘usual’ caveats and ‘reasons’ given for these results at the bottom, but why not dive right in to the results first…
Freshfields:
- The mean gender pay gap since last year, has increased from 53.2% to 53.5%.
- The median gender pay gap was even more stark, jumping to 46.1% , from 14.8% the year before.
- At the trainee and associate level, there was a 4% gap in mean hourly rate of pay, which swelled to 12.6% when comparing bonus figures.
Clifford Chance:
- The gap widened when comparing the mean hourly rates, with women now, on average, earning 17.2% less than men, up from 16.7 % last year.
- The pay gap at the partner level has also increased by 1.4%.
- Things were slightly more promising on the associate front, with female associates getting paid on average 2% less then men, down from 4% last year.
Linklaters:
- Despite the firm having a female senior partner and women making up 50% of its ‘director group’, the gender pay gap sits around the 60% mark, with little change from the previous year.
- It had, however, managed to decrease the gap in mean pay between equity partners, which now stands at 17.8%.
A&O:
- While the mean gender earnings gap has decreased since last year, it still stands at over 50%.
- The pay gap at partner level was comparable to its counterparts at 17.7%.
Slaughter & May:
- The firm omitted gender pay gap data for partners, specifying that “as a full lockstep firm, all partners promoted at the same time are remunerated equally”.
- At the associate level, the firm revealed a pay gap of 1.3%, unchanged from last year, and “no bonus pay gap”.
Caveats:
- Some of the firms attributed the gaps to higher proportions of women in lower paying business support roles, as well as more women being compared to their firms’ mostly male highest earners as more women gain entry to the partnership.
- For an extremely long time, the biggest earners at ‘all’ law firms have been men, and owing to the very long career and lock-step renumeration model firms have, men have been paid more for longer and it takes time for that to materially change.
My question is: How long until parity will be achieved, and what can be done to accelerate this, if anything, given the lockstep model?
