Here’s the lead-in to an article I read recently that I think every lawyer in Biglaw ought to read — both female and male. Although the article addresses issues unique to female lawyers, it is very much about the male lawyers who manage them.

“A generation of pledges, targets, mentoring schemes and agile-working policies has barely moved the numbers. The reason is not a shortage of effort or good faith. It is that the two structures which generate a law firm’s profits – the billable hour and the partnership tournament – are the same two structures that push women out. You cannot bolt equality onto a machine built to do the opposite.”

The author is David Burgess, Managing Director at Law Dragon, and is titled “The Structure Is the Bias: Why a Generation of Initiatives Hasn’t Moved the Numbers.”

Although I do not share all of the author’s assertions, I certainly understand the problem. I have been writing about the advancement of women lawyers for the past 20 years, and, fortunately during that time, I have seen women lawyers advance and prosper in the profession on a more consistent basis and without as many of the challenges and impediments that women lawyers of my generation encountered. I also understand that there is still a long way to go before equity is experienced for women in the profession, and I sincerely hope I am around to see it and to applaud it.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

On the subject of the billable hour:

A lawyer who reduces her hours to raise children is not judged against some abstract standard of contribution. She is measured, in six-minute increments, against colleagues with no comparable demands at home. Part-time and flexible working, the policies firms reach for first, do not solve this. They simply let a woman pursue the same impossible number on a pro-rata basis, with less visibility, less of the high-value work that flows to those who are always available, and a quiet question mark over her commitment.

On the subject of up-or-out partnership:

Its design is almost perfectly calibrated to exclude women. The decisive years, when associates must out-bill, out-network and out-originate their peers to win one of a handful of slots, fall precisely on the years of childbearing. And childbearing is only the most visible of the competing claims on those years. The same window, stretching from the late thirties into the forties, is so often when women become the primary carers for ageing parents as well, frequently while they are still raising school-aged children of their own … at the exact moment a partnership case has to be built and defended.

In summary:

The verdict on a generation of initiatives is in. They were not too cautious or too few. They were aimed at the wrong target. Until firms are willing to confront the billable hour and the partnership tournament … the numbers will keep telling the same story, year after year.

There is a lot to think about in this article. You can find it at https://www.lawdragon.com/news-features/2026-07-05-the-structure-is-the-bias-why-a-generation-of-initiatives-hasn-t-moved-the-number”

I woke up this morning to news that the US had suffered a blow in the World Cup yesterday. I am sorry about that. I like sports, too.

But that was not the worst blow that America suffered yesterday. The worst blow came from a decision of the US Supreme Court that sent shock waves through me and delivered a blow to the quality of care for elderly Americans like my Mom, who died while living in an assisted care facility in our home town in the Midwest, cared for by loving aides and enjoying the comfort and sense of well being that she deserved. It was what she wanted, and we were grateful for the quality of care she received.

Yesterday the Supreme Court sided with the Trump Administration and revoked the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over one million immigrants living in America, many of them from Haiti and working in the elder care space in our country. That was the biggest blow.

The TPS is a U.S. humanitarian program that provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to foreign nationals already in the United States who cannot safely return to their home countries. And this action was taken by our highest court without apparent remorse and in turning a blind eye to the reprehensible motive of hate for Haitians made clear by the slurs that our Chief Executive hurled at those immigrants when he accused them of eating dogs and cats and being from “shithole” countries. This, fortunately, did not escape the notice of Justice Kagan, as detailed in her dissent.

It has been well documented by the New York Times and other news outlets that Haitian immigrants are a critical part of the healthcare workforce, making up a vital percent of all immigrant healthcare workers nationwide. They have essential roles as hospital staff, in-home health aides, and fill valuable jobs in homes for the elderly like the one where my Mom lived.

They care for the beloved moms and dads throughout this country, who live too far away from their children and grandchildren to be cared for by family. The halls of hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities are filled with healthcare aides who have fled from countries where their lives and the lives of their children were threatened by ruthless governments and gangs.

Now many of those immigrants are headed home. Now they have lost the grace of the TPS and will trade it for the terror of the country they fled.

I care about this because I knew the workers who made sure that my Mom was able to live a long life in comfort and with the care she needed and deserved. And I appreciated them.

And now workers like them will be gone. Because the Court’s majority did not make the connection about the essential role those immigrants play in caring for our elderly and, instead, gave a nod to bias and hate.

It was a sad day. It was the big blow.

Earlier this year, I wrote a blog titled “Let’s Take a Step Back” addressing a new practice by BigLaw of recruiting first-year law students for summer associate positions — in some cases, even before the fall semester had started. I took issue with that practice from both my own experience as a 1L and from my experience teaching 1Ls at Georgetown Law. I encouraged law students who agreed with me to contact the ABA to protest the practice and to request a return to the “Hands Off 1Ls Until October 15” that law schools had agreed to in the past.

Results of a survey of more than 2,000 law students conducted last fall by the Law School Admission Council and the National Association for Law Placement were released recently. According to the survey, 56% of first year law students said that accelerated large firm recruiting timelines for summer associate positions had a negative impact on their first year of law school. And just 4% of students reported a positive impact.

The negative impacts reported in the survey included the inability to prioritize academic work and also focus on career planning. Even those students without aspirations to work at a large law firm said the new practice injected additional stress and pressure on campus. One student put it very bluntly, “Someone stop them from doing this again because it sucks, and nobody can actually focus on learning.”

Hopefully BigLaw has read the same survey results and will do the right thing and reverse the new recruiting practice. Keep your eyes on late summer and early fall to gauge whether they care more about young lawyers or about exercising their competitive edge.

Sometimes I hated it when I’m right. This is one of those times. This never should have happened in the first place and the geniuses at BigLaw should have known it would put students at risk.

And what about the law school placement officials? Shouldn’t they have known that this would be a problem?

Makes me wonder what other kinds of sweetheart deals are going on.