“Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide” — sits on the corner of Linda Varrenti Hernandez’s desk at the Allegheny County Bar Association.

“Women do leave the (legal) profession. The buzz word is they take the ‘off-ramp.’ But why should they have to?” Hernandez said. “The book is about how well women in general negotiate their own salary.”

Hernandez, 56, of Upper St. Clair, started work two weeks ago as the bar association’s gender equality coordinator, believed to be the first such bar association position in the country.

The association created the job because a 2006 membership survey showed little or no improvement in the pay disparity between male and female lawyers in the 15 years since the previous survey was conducted.

The Allegheny County Bar Association has 6,490 members, 1,804 of them women. An association subcommittee, Women in the Law Division, was the driving force behind the survey, Hernandez said.

According to the survey, male lawyers make significantly more than female lawyers, with only about 5 percent of female lawyers making more than $250,000 a year. About 20 percent of men are at that level. No woman who graduated law school in the 1990s is above the $200,000 to $249,999 level, while almost 10 percent of the male graduates of the 1990s were.

Other issues surfaced, such as “work-life balance,” Hernandez said.

“It’s the balance of being a legal professional while raising a family and taking care of elderly parents,” she said. “These things seem to fall on the women more than the men. It’s created a big problem.”

Of the women surveyed, 54.7 percent said they likely would practice law if given the chance to start over, compared with 70 percent of men.

“Pay is not the most important issue,” Hernandez said. “There don’t seem to be the programs or systems in place that guide female attorneys through the legal profession.”

That’s something Hernandez, a wife and mother of three daughters, hopes to change.

Hernandez graduated from Duquesne University in 2001. She was hired as an associate at Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote, a Downtown firm, and worked as a lawyer on loan for one year for Neighborhood Legal Services, an organization that provides legal work for low-income people.

“I’ve been involved in activism my whole life,” Hernandez said. “I get enormous satisfaction from impacting people’s lives.”

She grew up in Bloomfield, graduated from St. Paul Cathedral High School, and married at 21. She worked simple jobs until her youngest daughter went to high school.

Hernandez became a travel agent and later attended law school part-time. She has a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University.

“I took the (Law School Admission Test) and didn’t tell anyone. I applied to Duquesne and didn’t tell anyone until I got accepted,” she said.

Allegheny County Bar Association President Ken Gormley, a Duquesne law professor, said Hernandez’s life experiences can only enhance her position. She won Duquesne’s award for being the outstanding female graduate.

“I remember her speaking up in constitutional law. People always listened when she talked,” Gormley said. “Her winning that award was no accident.”

Gormley said that after the survey results were released, the bar association decided it needed a full-time staffer to address the issues.

Hernandez said her challenge is to address the survey results by improving communication and pushing for change, such as encouraging part-time opportunities, reduced hours, flexible schedules and allowing for child care.

“Can we make these changes so people don’t have to leave the profession?” Hernandez said. “I know change isn’t going to happen overnight.

“My anecdote is that when I walk into depositions, I get asked if I’m the court reporter. It shows how fast we make judgments about people.”