Bloomberg Law Survey Analysis Finds Ongoing Gender Pay Gap in Practice of IP Law

ARLINGTON, VA (February 3, 2020) — Bloomberg Law today announced that it released an analysis of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) annual member survey along gender lines, providing for the first time statistically-relevant data showing how women and men IP lawyers differ in various aspects of their intellectual property law careers. Among the most noteworthy findings, the proportion of men making $150,000 or more a year among the survey recipients is consistently higher than the proportion of women making that amount. The analysis also found that male partners’ compensation at Am Law 200 firms was 53% higher on average than women’s, while general counsels’ compensation was an average of 39% higher for men than for women. An overview of the analysis is available at http://onb-law.com/CEXb50y2nVp.

Bloomberg Law partnered with AIPLA’s Women in IP subcommittee to analyze responses on topics including job responsibilities and job satisfaction. The analysis includes AIPLA member surveys from 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. Survey participants were intellectual property attorneys and current or former members of AIPLA.

“This analysis provides key data on the current state of women in IP law, and gives us a glimpse into the future based on trends over the past eight years,” says Molly Huie, team lead for data analysis and surveys at Bloomberg Law. “Women currently lag behind men in their IP law careers, but there’s evidence it may not always be this way – 31% of women are on a partnership/management track, compared to 21% of men.”

Additional survey findings include:

• Roughly one in every five women report ever having worked part-time as an IP practitioner, which is nearly double the part-time rate for men.
• Women in IP law report higher amounts of time spent on administrative tasks than men.
• Over half of women in IP law say they have never been a first chair, compared to only one third of men. In addition, one out of five women in IP law report having no book of business – an important metric in the race for partnership. This is double the amount of men reporting no book of business.
• Nearly nine out of 10 women report that work allows an acceptable work/life balance, and three-quarters say they are either satisfied or even love their job.

The full report is available for download at http://onb-law.com/9d3j50y2nUp.