Kristin Bronson moved to Colorado from Washington, D.C., with her husband in the mid-1990s to pursue a career as a lawyer in a place where she also could raise a family.
A decade after enrolling at the University of Colorado law school, Bronson is a partner at a well-known Denver law firm and has two daughters, aged 5 and 8.
The balancing act hasn’t come without sacrifices. Bronson, a trial lawyer with Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons, can go weeks without seeing her children, and she says she relies heavily on others for child care. But she said her girls benefit from their mother’s achievements.
“My daughters are not only proud of their mom being a lawyer … it has done a lot for them setting their goals,” said Bronson, 37. “They look at me and they realize they want to work and accomplish and be successful.”
Bronson, a legislative assistant in Washington for then-U.S. Sen. Bob Graham before she moved to Colorado, said building a successful law practice as a mother would have been more difficult on the East Coast, where law firms can be less flexible and more demanding.
A recent study supports that notion. Denver ranked No. 3 for the percentage of female partners, according to an annual survey released in November by the National Association for Law Placement, a professional development association based in Washington, D.C. NALP surveyed about 1,400 law firms in 43 U.S. cities, including 24 based – or with offices – in Denver.
NALP found that 22.3 percent of partners in Denver were women, compared to 17.3 percent nationally. Only Miami and New Orleans had more female partners, with 23.7 and 22.8 percent, respectively.
The numbers here and elsewhere are still low compared to the number of women graduating from law school and working as associates in law firms. Roughly half of law-school graduates are women and 44 percent of associates are women, according to NALP.
Associates are employees of the law firm. After six to eight years, the firm offers some associates the opportunity to become partners – which usually includes a pay raise, greater responsibilities and an ownership stake.
Pay for women still lags
Pay for female attorneys continues to lag behind male counterparts. A national study by the NALP Foundation, a related organization, found that female lawyers who began practicing in 2000 earned, on average, $66,000 compared with $80,000 for male lawyers.
The NALP study also looked at minority representation at law firms, finding that 4.9 percent of Denver partners are black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian or multi-cultural. Nationally, the number is 4.6 percent.
According to several successful female attorneys, Denver has lower barriers to entry into social and business circles than Los Angeles, New York or other bigger cities.
“Colorado still has some of that frontier atmosphere that if you’re good you can get ahead,” said Denver lawyer Karen Mathis, 55, an attorney with the Denver office of McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter and president-elect of the American Bar Association.
Denver firms generally try to accommodate their lawyers’ family demands, whether they’re men or women, others said. Associates may be allowed to work part time while staying on the partner track. Flex-time arrangements let lawyers rely on each other so they can tend to family needs.
“Typically, the years you’re working the most as an attorney are the years you’re also having a family,” said Natalie Hanlon-Leh, 41, a litigator and partner with Faegre & Benson in Denver who has two girls. “Firms in Colorado, my firm at least, value those issues.
“The quantity of billable hours that are required by most Colorado firms are less than what are required by the larger firms that tend to be on the coasts,” she said. “It’s possible to have a sophisticated practice here but still have a family and still have some balance. I think that’s harder in some markets.”
Because there are more female partners in Denver, there are more mentors and role models available to associates, said Hanlon-Leh and others.
There are drawbacks to building a practice in Denver. Attorney compensation is lower here than in markets such as New York and Washington, and it can be more difficult to land work on cutting-edge legal cases.
Median first-year associate salaries at the largest law firms averaged $112,500 in western states (including Colorado) in NALP’s 2005 salary survey, released in August. In the Northeast, those salaries averaged $125,000. But medium-sized firms of 100-250 lawyers – a group that includes the largest Denver-based firms – paid an average of $88,000 nationally, according to NALP.
The percentage of female partners nationally has risen only marginally since 1999, when it was 15 percent, according to NALP’s survey on women in law. In Denver it rose from 21.5 percent that year to 23 percent in 2004, but fell slightly to 22.3 last year.
The “sticky floor”
As for pay among local attorneys, a Colorado Women’s Bar Association study of 5,100 lawyers in the state found that women’s average 1999 income was 60 percent of men’s, a gap that had improved little from 1993.
There are many reasons for the disparities in career advancement and compensation, according to studies and interviews. In general, female lawyers say it’s more difficult for them to tap into traditional social networks that connect them with new clients.
Hanlon-Leh said she doesn’t golf or go to as many sporting events as her male colleagues, but has taken clients and their kids to Disney on Ice and the circus.
Women tend to go in greater numbers into areas of law – such as nonprofit and government work – that pay less than the top-paying sectors of private practice. Women also tend to drop out of the profession in higher numbers than men – often to tend to their families.
“We used to talk about the glass ceiling, but now we talk about the sticky floor. Women can’t get to high levels in law firms,” said Mathis. “The significant issue remains that women are responsible for … kids and family.”
Bronson said she draws on many means of support for her career: her husband, Jeremy, who is Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s special assistant for public safety, their extended families, day-care providers and her firm. Hanlon-Leh, whose husband, Christopher, is an attorney at Holland & Hart, said she relies on a similar network, including a part-time nanny.
Both women took time off when they had children but returned within several months to full-time work. They say they can go weeks without spending much time with their children during trials, but try to make up for lost time during slower periods.
Others have made career adjustments to achieve balance. After having children in the mid-1980s, Marcy Glenn, a partner with Holland & Hart, shifted from trial litigation to appellate litigation to have more control over her time. She also has worked part time since then, which extended the time it took her to make partner.
Still, she says it would have been more difficult to accomplish that in places like New York or San Francisco.
“One reason a lot of people choose to live in Colorado and practice their professions here is that it’s not as traditional an environment as on the coasts,” said Glenn, 50. “There’s a strong focus on lifestyle here.”
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or at ggriffin@denverpost.com.
