“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.”

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.”