Nearly half of male lawyers don’t believe the profession has a gender pay gap

Now in its 10th edition, the Top 25 Attraction Firms ranking serves as a significant component of the Legal Firm of Choice Survey, which sets out to identify the most desirable private legal practices across Australia.

The latest survey was conducted from 30 January to 13 February 2025 and garnered a total of 434 responses from legal professionals currently engaged in private practice throughout the country. It recorded the attitudes, priorities, and perceptions of these practitioners, offering a valuable glimpse into the evolving landscape of the legal profession.

In the past few months, Lawyers Weekly published the Top 25 Attraction Firms Ranking for 2024-25, published how more than 20 per cent of lawyers plan to leave their firms, revealed which BigLaw firms gained and lost popularity among lawyers this past year, uncovered which firms young lawyers want to work at, and discovered that one in five lawyers are unhappy with their salaries.

Findings

The survey asked participants whether they believe that a gender pay gap exists for legal professionals in roles similar to their own, based on both personal experience and that of their peers.

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Combining the responses from both men and women, 42 per cent of lawyers indicated that they believe a gender pay gap exists in the legal profession, with 12 per cent strongly agreeing and 30 per cent agreeing with the question posed.

This represents a slight decrease from last year, when 51 per cent of respondents expressed the belief that a gender pay gap exists within the profession.

At the other end of the spectrum, nearly one in four lawyers (25 per cent) either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the existence of such a pay gap, while 31 per cent remained neutral on the issue.

However, when the findings are broken down by gender, a disparity in perspectives is clear.

One in two female lawyers (51 per cent) believed that pay disparities exist between genders in the legal profession, with 17 per cent strongly agreeing and 34 per cent agreeing.

In contrast, nearly one in five women respondents (18 per cent) either disagreed or strongly disagreed that a gender pay gap exists within the profession.

Women’s perspectives on the existence of a gender pay gap have shifted over the past year. In 2024, a larger proportion expressed this belief, with 63 per cent agreeing or strongly agreeing that a pay gap exists, compared to just 10 per cent who disagreed or strongly disagreed.

On the other hand, just 26 per cent of male lawyers acknowledged the existence of a gender pay gap in the legal profession. Of those, only 3 per cent said they “strongly agree”, while 22 per cent indicated they “agree”.

Meanwhile, 43 per cent of male lawyers stated that they do not believe a gender pay gap exists within the profession, with 23 per cent disagreeing and 20 per cent strongly disagreeing.

However, this reflects a slight improvement from last year, when 40 per cent of male respondents indicated they either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the existence of a pay gap.

WGEA results

In March, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released its second annual report on the gender pay gap in large Australian businesses, including the country’s largest law firms.

Under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, organisations with 100 or more employees are mandated to report their gender pay gap (GPG) data. This year, over 80 legal workplaces submitted this information.

The new data revealed that just under half of the 62 law firms with comparable data had a worse total remuneration gender pay gap than last year.

For the first time, WGEA included average gender pay gap figures for both base salary and total remuneration, along with a breakdown of the percentage of women across different seniority levels.

On average, the base salary gender pay gap stands at 19.3 per cent, while the total remuneration gap is 19.73 per cent across all 81 firms.

Australian Women Lawyers president Renee Bianchi said the GPG data could not be “ignored or explained away”.

“It goes without saying that the legal industry should be leading by example in regards to workplace equality. Unfortunately, it seems that there is still some way to go,” Bianchi told Lawyers Weekly.

Law Society of NSW president Jennifer Ball expressed that, with women comprising half of the solicitor profession, “the achievement of gender equality in the workplace makes sense both as a value and a business imperative”.

Gender pay gap is ‘deep-rooted’

Published in February, the fourth annual Women in the Workplace report by global tech provider HiBob, based on a January 2025 survey of 2,000 men and 1,000 women across Australian workplaces, highlighted the ongoing frustration around the persistent gender pay gap.

Only half (51 per cent) of women surveyed believed that their employers were actively working to close the gap, while 37 per cent felt their employers would never prioritise this issue – an increase from 31 per cent last year.

Despite these challenges, the report also identified encouraging signs of progress. Fifty-three per cent of women expressed greater confidence in discussing a company’s gender pay gap during job interviews, rising from 40 per cent in the previous year.

Commenting on the findings at the time, HiBob’s customer advocacy manager, Sabrina Scherm, described the gender pay gap as a “deep-rooted” problem that will take years to resolve.

“Part of the problem is that many organisations – especially those that run payroll and remuneration reviews in spreadsheets – aren’t keeping their finger on the pulse regularly enough on what their gender pay gap is and how it changes over time,” she said.

“It’s, therefore, not something that’s front of mind for big businesses until they have to report their data to the WGEA, and arguably not front of mind for small businesses at all.”

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