And just where are the women law grads going? Is that not also an important question? Or--in glorious legal fashion--do only the "big firms" "count"? The "big, national" firms of which you speak offer a crushingly patriarchal career structure. No wonder that many of the women in my law school class (and me, for that matter) choose smaller or medium size firms that offer a more sane (i.e. less than 2200 b.h.) path to firm partnership. Or, more importantly, many of them choose public interest. They're the ones doing the important legal work in this society, contra Cravath et al.

"So I am wondering what the more than 50% female members of today's law school classes are thinking about the Stanford students' findings. "

Quite possibly "Wow--looks like the woman at Fulbright and Jaworski have the inside scoop on great husbands. I better take their offer more seriously."

The MIT study shows them going to be house counsel,( although this is odd, since the percentage of women chief house counsel has not gone up enormously), to government, public interest jobs or out of law altogether. MIT says 6% of them opt out to stay home. I don't know what a crushingly patriarchal career structure is, but there has been something of a speedup at the top of the American job structure, and men are participating in it at much greater hours and rates than similarly educated women are. So if that's patriarchal, if their wives are doing more of the household labor, as other surveys show, then they are enabling the guys to be patriarchal, no?

I offer this bit of family history for what light it might shed on these issues from a Canadian perspective.

My daughter about 5 years ago graduated from an excellent Canadian law school—same one I went to, too many years ago—with a whole slew of As. She was originally on the big firm track, getting a summer job with one of them after her first year of school because of her good marks. She did not like the big firm ethos right from the start and took herself off that track. She got a job with the Federal Department of Justice, which to me sounds like a dream employer. For an example, she has two children, and is in the last ¼ of her second year long maternity leave at a high percentage of her paid salary. All of her friends, men and women, hired at big firms, she tells me have left them for saner legal pastures, looking for better balances between law and life.

I originally championed and tried to argue for the possibility of her seeking big firm employment and my daughter wisely disregarded my solicitations.  I think now she made the right choice. That conclusion is reinforced by both the experience of her friends, some of whom I have spoken to, and stories I hear from young lawyers that I meet such as entire hired cohorts after a few years leaving the big Canadian firm that hired them for more comfortable situations, however less green.

There have been massive changes in the legal culture I have observed and experienced over the 30 years I have been a lawyer. A few of them are: the sheer number of women in the profession, as now more than ½ the places in Canadian law schools are taken by women; the relative indifference with which greatly talented young lawyers, men and women, behold the big firms; and the greater geniality and reasonableness of the judges I appear before, more and more of them being women. (In our Supreme Court, 4 of the 9 judges are women, including the Chief Justice.)

basman -  in your experience are female judges superior to male ones? More fair, logical, balanced?

Just curious as to whether law as a profession will someday end up dominated by women.

Can't so generalize, but they are part of this generation's generally more civilized judges who are respectful of counsel compared to the curmudgeons I used to plead before about 30 years ago.

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