The legal profession, whose members day in and day out argue matters of justice and equality, appears to be no place for women seeking fair workplace treatment.

In fact, nothing occurred in a 15-year span to narrow the pay gap between male and female lawyers locally, according to a new Allegheny County Bar Association survey released yesterday. Issues of lack of pay and respect that arose in a 1990 survey persist even though far more women are employed in law offices today. Whatever breakthroughs have been achieved by the number of women climbing in law firms’ ranks seemingly failed to have broader meaning for lawyers answering the September 2005 survey.

The survey included responses from 1,250 bar members, about one of every five members of the county association. Separating out data for those working full time, 20 percent of the men said they were earning at least $250,000 a year, compared to just 5 percent of women. More than 20 percent of women working full time were earning less than $50,000, compared to 8 percent of men.

The report noted that men in the profession are older on average, with more years out of law school. That could be a factor in more men rising through the seniority ranks to positions of higher pay, but disparities also showed up when looking at groups of men and women in the profession for similar periods. The pay differential showed up although men and women reported working similar hours, about 48 per week.

Dissatisfaction with their employment situation was twice as common among women as among men. That was another factor spurring the bar association to create a Gender Equality Task Force last month to analyze the findings and look for ways to elevate women’s status and pay in the profession.

“The results of this survey commissioned by our Women in the Law Division are very disappointing,” said Kim Berkeley Clark, Allegheny County Family Court administrative judge and president of the county bar. “Obviously, the bar was set low 15 years ago and it looks like it hasn’t risen. … We understand this will not be a quick-fix issue, but we fully understand that this is an issue that cannot be ignored.”

Although the lack of progress on the issue was striking to some in the field, officials involved in the survey noted the disparities were similar to what has been found in surveys of lawyers in other cities, and also among other professions such as realtors and accountants.

Among the findings of the survey, conducted by professors from Westminster College:

Twenty percent of women felt discriminatory conduct played a large role in inhibiting their professional development, and almost 40 percent more believed it was sometimes a factor.

Men are twice as likely as women to have achieved the high status of equity partner in a firm. Females are twice as likely as men to be associates in law firms, which is tied to the shorter number of years on average that they’ve been out of law school.

In breaking lawyers into income groups, a greater percentage of males was found in all income categories $150,000 and above, and women were far more likely to earn less than $100,000. Male respondents were eight times more likely to be at the top tier, above $350,000.

Gary P. Hunt, managing shareholder of the Tucker Arensburg firm and co-chairman of the new task force with U.S. Magistrate Lisa Pupo Lenihan, said that while the survey covered many topics, the pay issue garners attention because it is one with hard data behind it.

“I suppose that’s the most obvious and direct impact of gender bias,” he said of salary differentials. “And if there’s one conclusion I’ve come to, [gender bias] is not a simple issue. There’s lots of overlapping aspects, some of them within the ability of the legal profession to control, some not.”

Bar association officials say that while the findings aren’t much different from 1990, the followup to try to address them will be. The task force, made up of both female and male attorneys and judges, has formed committees to work on different aspects of the issue and report back before the end of the year. That includes looking at the workplaces with the best reputations for treating women well, and trying to spread their practices.

“On the one hand I am surprised we haven’t had more progress, but it’s not surprising considering what you hear from other parts of the country or other professions,” said Gretchen Kelly, a 22-year attorney who is chief real estate counsel for PNC Financial Corp.

“I believe there may not be as much overt conversation as there was before, but the culture hasn’t really changed.”

Ms. Kelly, 51, a member of the task force, said she’s felt treated fairly in the profession but knows peers who have not.

An “old boys network” may still limit the ability of women to reach and excel in the “rainmaker” positions drawing clients and pay at the top of the profession, she said.

While she wasn’t part of any discussions on how to seek equality in the field in the early 1990s, she hopes to help achieve progress to avoid seeing another survey 15 years from now with women just as far behind. Get easy payment with payday advance

“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.” easy payment through payday loan

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.”