The retention and promotion of more women in law firms isn’t only critical to leveling the playing field between male and female attorneys.

The presence of more women in prominent legal positions actually could boost firms’ bottom lines, said Kimberly Brown, the president of the Allegheny County Bar Association.

Ms. Brown, a partner at Downtown firm Thorp Reed & Armstrong, was elected president of the bar association for a yearlong term beginning in July that will include the much-anticipated launch of the Institute for Gender Equality.

Created by the bar association last year as a result of a survey that found women had made few strides in advancement in the local legal community between 1990 and 2005, the Institute has scheduled its first programming for November.

It will hold a kickoff luncheon Oct. 28 at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, featuring Judge Marjorie Rendell of the U.S. Court of Appeals and wife of Gov. Ed Rendell; and Laurel Bellows, past chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

“We’re incredibly excited,” Ms. Brown said.

“Both of them are very active in activities for advancement and equal treatment of women in the profession.

By looking at Judge Rendell’s career, in many ways it’s tracked the career path we see for women in the profession: from private practice to something else, which in her case is a distinguished career on the bench.”

The migration of female lawyers from private practice to what Ms. Brown called “less traditional practice areas,” such as in-house corporate counsels, nonprofit work, teaching or jobs unrelated to the law, is a driving force behind the institute’s creation.

Its programs, Ms. Brown said, will help law firm managing partners and other key decision makers identify the reasons women leave practices and assist firms in creating work environments that can enhance, rather than inhibit women’s careers.

Specific issues that drive women away from traditional law firm positions, she said, include lack of flexibility in balancing family and work, and little or no assistance in career planning and business development.

After training and investing in young lawyers, firms stand to lose $200,000 to $500,000 “when that woman walks out the door” to seek a better balance or a promotion elsewhere, said Ms. Brown.

“It’s to their own economic advantage to take a look at why women are leaving so they don’t incur that loss … and continue to have an employee who will contribute to the bottom line.”

The bar association approved $65,000 for programming and expenses related to the Institute through June 2010.

Besides sessions targeted to key law firm decision makers, it will offer programs for practitioners and law students — both male and female.

While bar associations across the nation have conducted studies and convened task force committees to study gender equality, Ms. Brown believes that the local initiative goes a step beyond by offering programs to help shrink the gender gap.

“We’re not aware of any other bar association addressing how to make real changes and educate employers about the changes they can make to directly impact the retention of women in a way that will help their business model and their bottom line.

There can’t be one without the other.”

In the early 1970s, two decades before she became a federal judge, Marjorie “Midge” Rendell was fresh out of law school at Villanova University and looking for work.

One of her first impressions when she landed at Philadelphia firm Duane Morris & Heckscher, Judge Rendell recalled, was meeting another female attorney there who had a young child and was pregnant with another.

The fact that the firm embraced a woman who was juggling career and family — at a time before many firms did — was one reason Judge Rendell stayed there for 20 years and eventually became its second female partner.

She joined the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1994 and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1997.

Not that she hasn’t encountered gender issues in her career.

There was the time she denied during a conference call that her baby had burped on her shoulder. And the time she felt a male colleague was offered a bigger office with a better view simply because he was a man.

While some gender barriers have disappeared since she began practicing law, Judge Rendell, who is also the wife of Pennsylvania’s governor, believes there are still outdated policies and practices holding women back in the legal profession.

“We have to ask, ‘What are we doing that undermines women?’” she said yesterday during a kickoff lunch for the Allegheny County Bar Association’s Institute for Gender Equality.

The judge addressed a crowd of more than 350 at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown.

The institute was created last year as a result of a survey that concluded female attorneys in the Pittsburgh legal community had made little progress in advancing between 1990 and 2005. The institute will hold its first class next week and has a mission to educate male and female decision-makers at law firms, corporate legal departments and in other organizations about achieving equality between the genders.

As a young attorney building a practice in bankruptcy law and commercial litigation, Judge Rendell said she was frequently stressed by the demands of work and family.

“I cried to my husband but I wouldn’t let on at work. I was a good soldier. I was a poster child for ‘Women Don’t Ask,’” she said referring to a book published several years ago about women’s reluctance to ask for better pay and for other things they may need in the workplace as well as at home.

While her husband was a supportive sounding board and “my biggest fan,” Judge Rendell eventually found career help through a male partner at her firm who became her mentor.

“Every woman lawyer needs this,” she said.

The local Institute for Gender Equality will “pave the way out of darkness into light,” and help maximize the potential of female attorneys, she said.

Laurel Bellows, a Chicago lawyer and former top-ranking official in the American Bar Association, told the audience the institute is a “powerful initiative” in helping women achieve equality and career advancement.

While some women have achieved seats on boards and high-ranking executive jobs, there are not enough females in prominent positions to stop shaping an agenda for future change, she said.

“Doing nothing is … accepting the status quo,” she said. “I fear our accomplishments create a false sense that inequality has disappeared. We’ve only picked the low-hanging fruit.”

Three years after an Allegheny County Bar Association survey revealed a gap in pay between male and female lawyers, the group today will start its Institute for Gender Equality.

The institute, headed by bar association gender equality coordinator Linda Varrenti Hernandez, will offer classes targeting legal decision-makers, practitioners and law students in the upcoming months.

A luncheon today kicking off the program features first lady Marjorie Rendell, a federal appeals court judge, and Laurel Bellows, a women’s rights advocate.

“Women are leaving the practice of law in droves,” Hernandez said. “They’re not rising to positions of leadership. We really want to make an impact on that.”

Hernandez pointed to the results of a 2006 membership survey showing little or no improvement in pay disparity between male and female lawyers in the 15 years since a previous survey was conducted.

According to the survey, only about 5 percent of female lawyers make more than $250,000 a year. About 20 percent of men do. No women surveyed who graduated law school in the 1990s made $250,000 or more, while almost 10 percent of the male graduates of the 1990s did.

Nationally, about 17.3 percent of partners in law firms are women. In Allegheny County, 15.8 percent are, said Kim Brown, president of the county bar association.

The association has approximately 6,600 members, and about 1,780 of them women, spokesman Tom Loftus said.

Brown said the gap exists despite high-profile examples of women in leadership positions, such as U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, Allegheny County Common Pleas President Judge Donna Jo McDaniel and U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose, who recently stepped down as chief judge.

• “There has been a lot of progress in many areas of law, such as on the bench,” Brown said.
• “There’s an inability to crack that last barrier to succeed in law firms.”

Rendell, 61, who has been a federal judge for 16 years, said a lot has changed since she became a lawyer, but that much hasn’t.

She told one story of when she was an attorney, and a judge didn’t think she fit a lawyer’s description.

“He turned to me and said I should be a model. On one hand that’s very flattering but on the other hand, it’s not. You’re there representing a client,” Rendell said. “It’s little things like that.”

In an effort to raise awareness about the issues that may be contributing to wide disparities in pay and promotions between male and female lawyers, the Allegheny County Bar Association has launched an Institute for Gender Equality.

The institute, which will offer programs on topics such as women in leadership roles, mentoring and work-life balance, is among the recommendations contained in a report released yesterday by the bar association’s Gender Equality Task Force.

The task force was created in response to a 2005 survey that found female lawyers’ salaries and opportunities for career advancement had barely improved since 1990.

For the last 18 months, the task force has conducted research, held focus groups and engaged in one-on-one meetings with legal professionals — men and women whose jobs ranged from law clerks to top executives — to identify gender-related issues and develop a strategy to shrink the gender gap.

In addition to the new institute, the task force report recommended that law firms, corporate legal departments and other organizations that employ lawyers address a range of gender issues including unbiased compensation systems and initiatives that will help lower the number of women leaving the legal profession.

Task force members said creation of the institute was their top recommendation because it involves taking specific actions to resolve gender-related problems.

“What we’d like to do is really take charge of the issue and eradicate inequality within the Allegheny County Bar Association and the legal community here,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan, task force co-chair.

“I didn’t think programming held four times a year would be effective enough,” said Linda Varrenti Hernandez, gender equality coordinator for the bar association and author of the report. “We had to provide an opportunity for everyone to partake in the solution to this problem. Whatever we had to do had to be more permanent. If we don’t do something like this, we’ll lose the incentive we need to go forward.”

The institute will track participants and what classes they take and follow up with them for feedback, said Ms. Varrenti Hernandez.

For instance, someone enrolled in a negotiation skills class might later answer a survey from the institute about what he or she learned, whether he or she used the skills and if they were effective.

“It’s important to have some tool to measure the results without waiting another considerable amount of time,” said Ms. Varrenti Hernandez. “We didn’t want to wait another 15 years to do another survey.”

Among the findings of the bar association’s 2005 survey were that female lawyers were more likely to report lower salaries than men with comparable education and responsibilities; and that women were twice as likely than men to be dissatisfied with their job situation. Overall, the study concluded that women lawyers weren’t doing much better in terms of pay and professional advancement than they were at the time of the last survey on gender issues in 1990.

The Institute for Gender Equality, expected to offer classes beginning in early 2009, will target three groups, said Ms. Varrenti Hernandez: decision-makers at law firms, corporations, government agencies and other organizations; practicing attorneys; and law school students. Classes will be held at the bar association’s Downtown offices and other locations.

Participants will pay for classes, and programs will include local and national speakers. The institute also will develop a mobile component to provide programming at various locations.

“I think the most important outcome, frankly, of all of this is heightened awareness of the situation,” said Timothy Ryan, chief executive officer of Downtown law firm Eckert Seamans and a member of the task force’s best practices subcommittee.

“Even if you don’t believe the problem exists, if it’s perceived, in many ways, it’s real.”

Eckert Seamans created its own women’s initiative about a year ago, Mr. Ryan said, “because we believe there is an issue in the workplace.”

Among the ways Eckert is trying to address gender issues is by providing flex-time scheduling and mentoring programs for its staff, Mr. Ryan said.

Judge Pupo Lenihan is optimistic the Gender Equality Institute and other initiatives will help to eventually eliminate the kind of obstacles she encountered as a woman rising through the ranks of private law firms after she graduated from law school in 1983.

“I don’t feel there was intentional discrimination, but often women were treated differently. It was a little bit harder to get involved with firm activities if you didn’t golf. And it was harder to meet clients and bring in business. There was not a lot of training for that kind of thing.”

One of the reasons she jumped from private practice to a government job was to better juggle her career with the demands of raising three children. “At a law firm, it’s hard to bill hours, bring in business and still raise a family.”

The judge believes that pay disparities between male and female lawyers have increased because women “aren’t staying with firms to reach levels where they’re making the money that men are making at top levels.”

The goal of the task force, she said, “is to address the issues that are causing them to drop out.”