Top Female Lawyers Say They Are Treated Like Assistants at Work

Litigators— lawyers who work to help clients win, or survive lawsuits—can have high-stakes careers. One female litigator's job, however, came with a less thrilling description. “She had always been the self-appointed ‘detail-oriented task manager on the team, scheduling meetings, keeping the calendar and taking notes,’” wrote the author of a broad study on workplace inequality in law, released by American Lawyer magazine last week, about one of the lawyers who journalists interviewed. The lawyer's male colleagues called her their “work wife.”

The "work wife" badge is a symbol of a culture in which women are seen as supporters of, rather than equal to, their male peers. Women in law tend to do lower-level tasks for clients and earn less for the hours they work, according to the study, which based its findings on interviews with four dozen firm leaders, professors, consultants, and women partners.