As you’ll see below, the prevalence of sexual harassment in the legal profession is well-documented in numerous studies that span nearly a decade. It’s downright depressing to review those studies because so little has changed. Reading them, I’ve come to think that, as long as legal employers are writing sexual harassment policies solely to avoid liability rather than to effect widespread cultural change in the workplace, powerful men who harass women will remain untouchable. And until more women are in senior leadership of law firms, corporations, nonprofits and government entities, it’s unlikely we will see the cultural change required.

But do really we have to wait until women are more than 50% of leadership positions in law to see change? Are there other reasons we’re not seeing faster change?

Harassment in the Legal Profession

At the outset, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Sexual harassment unquestionably happens in the legal profession, and women rarely report it. In 2020 Women on Guard completed a report that found that 75% of the respondents had directly experienced sexual harassment, and only 14% of those women reported it. In a 2018 survey of men and women in businesses and law firms conducted by the ABA Journal and Working Mother, 68% of the female respondents reported that they experienced sexual harassment. Only 30% of those females reported the behavior, and over half of those who did not report it decided not to do so because they feared for the security of their jobs.

Similarly, the ABA report Walking Out the Door—which I’ve discussed before—found that 50% of the 1200 experienced women lawyers surveyed were sexual harassed at work. 16% of those women lost work opportunities because they rebuffed sexual advances. Perhaps most importantly, 28% of the women who experienced sexual harassment avoided reporting it due to fear of retaliation. (Keep in mind these were senior women lawyers, whose jobs were arguably more secure than those of younger women lawyers.) These sober statistics led the study’s authors to conclude that sexual harassment is not confined to certain law firms “but instead is widespread across the profession.”

And although until recently it was studied much less, sexual harassment of women lawyers is by no means limited to law firms or large companies. Female law clerks have reported decades of abuse silently suffered during their clerkships. And, although their work is not restricted to lawyers, Project When (Workplace Harassment Ends Now) reports that sexual harassment is widespread throughout government employment (federal and state) as well.

The Collective Experiences of Women Lawyers Add Up

Decades of experiencing harassment at work has had long-term consequences. While you might not think that women lawyers are leaving the profession because of sexual harassment, there is evidence that they are. The Walking Out the Door report discussed above found that 9% of women identified sexual harassment or retaliation for reporting it as a “very important reason for leaving.” 15% said it was a “somewhat important” reason, and 24% said it was a “very or somewhat important” reason for leaving.

These numbers are likely significantly understated, as there are several things that these studies don’t address. First, studies don’t ask women whether they’ve left employers—or the law entirely—because of harassment or retaliation experienced by other women. You don’t have to be harassed yourself to see that your workplace tolerates sexual harassment and retaliates against women who report it. Why would women want to stay at a place where women are repeatedly harassed (often by the same guy), and management turns a blind eye?

Second, studies on sexual harassment don’t measure the pervasiveness of offensive conduct directed at women that falls outside the legal definition of sexual harassment. (Even though it’s a terrible word (what’s “micro” about them?), these days we call them “microaggressions.” Working for decades in environments where you learn to expect and then internalize comments about your appearance, your body, and your sexuality have profound and largely unacknowledged effects.

Along these lines, I recently read about a Canadian study of more than 2,000 working women in professional roles that found that women were more likely to report discriminatory behavior when they experienced “overt discrimination.” However, when those women observed more ambiguous behavior, they “turned inward” and kept the incident to themselves. Studies on sexual harassment don’t track the effects of “turning inward” over and over again.

Our Silence

And of course, sexual harassment in the legal profession is also worse than these surveys report because legal employers frequently resolve the rare lawsuit out-of-court or in mediation. As a result, even the original allegations may be sealed, and the terms of any resolution are protected by non-disclosure agreements or other types of confidentiality agreements. Lauren Stiller Rikleen’s excellent book The Shield of Silence-How Power Perpetuates a Culture of Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace describes the allegations of some well-publicized sexual harassment lawsuits against major law firms, but, when she sought to learn more about them, Rikleen discovered that that most of the files for those lawsuits only contained the original complaint, and in many cases the allegations were redacted. These practices deprive other women of a way to know if they should avoid certain firms or male attorneys. Or if they’re alone in experiencing harassment or retaliation.

I’d love to end this article by demanding a revolution. But I’m deeply skeptical about whether one will happen. If you look up any of the studies I quoted at the outset about the prevalence of sexual harassment in the legal profession, you’ll find articles about how the findings are “shocking,” “stunning,” “unacceptable,” or require a reckoning. But many of those studies are nearly ten years old, and yet little has changed.

It’s also not as if we have no idea what needs to happen at our places of employment for change to occur. As one example, Rikleen’s Shield of Silence contains a 46-page chapter with a blueprint for change. It needed 46 pages because many things that need to change are foundational: we need cultures to change so that women feel safe where they work and know that their concerns will be handled fairly by those charged with enforcing policies.

But maybe that won’t happen until, as I said at the outset, we see more women in senior leadership positions. Tell me - what else do you think would make change happen?

Let’s be talking about something different in 2030.

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