“Number of Women Lawyers Hits 5-Year Low at NLJ 250 Firms”

From this site:

The percentage of women partners and associates working at NLJ 250 law firms this year fell to its lowest point since 2006.

Women associates and partners accounted for 29.2 percent of all attorneys at NLJ 250 firms. Five years ago, women made up 32 percent of attorneys at those firms.

The findings are from this year’s NLJ 250, The National Law Journal’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest law firms. The percentage of women was based on the average number of attorneys working at those firms.

The average size of NLJ 250 law firms this year was 517 lawyers, with women partners and associates comprising 151 of those attorneys. This year’s decline to 29 percent was the lowest since the NLJ began reporting gender breakdowns in 2006. Last year, women partners and associates made up 30 percent of NLJ 250 attorneys.

Since 2006, the percentage of women partners and associates has declined slightly each year. Those declines occurred even as firms got bigger in 2006, 2007 and 2008. …