Partner parity: New Partners survey sees increase in women

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Gender parity among law firm partners has been a goal for years. In 2019, Missouri firms weren’t quite there — but they got awfully close.

Female partners, whether promoted or hired laterally, made up 44 percent of the Missouri Lawyers Media New Partners list this year, an increase of 10 percentage points from the prior year. The numbers are even closer when examining only those who were promoted from within — women made up 49 percent of the 2019 class, up from 37 percent in 2018.

Among the firms with the highest percentage of new female partners is Husch Blackwell, particularly among those who were promoted. Of nine newly minted partners in Missouri, six were women.

Paul J. Eberle, Husch’s chief executive officer, said this year’s class reflects a long effort by the legal industry in general and Husch in particular to diversify their ranks.

“It’s good and appropriate and right to see that the results are finally catching up,” he said.

Husch’s class was notable also for its size, with 14 new partners in the last year.

“We’re trying to find the right people, develop the right people and promote them or attract them into the partnership ranks at all levels,” Eberle said.

The single largest partner class in Missouri was at Armstrong Teasdale, which added 15 partners or equity partners in Missouri. The firm said it was one of its largest classes in years. The class includes five female partners.

David Braswell, managing partner of Armstrong Teasdale, said in an interview that this year’s large class reflects the performance of the attorneys.

“There’s really no significance in the number, other than it’s evidence of that fact that the firm is on a strong growth trajectory and that we had a number of very qualified people in the pipeline who earned an elevated status this year,” he said.

Braswell said partners are evaluated on a number of criteria, ranging from their ability to be team players and role models to their commitment to the firm’s mission and values to the respect and trust they have among clients.

“First and foremost, they need to be good lawyers,” he said.

The New Partners list is based on emailed surveys completed by Missouri law firms, supplemented with information from news releases about new hires throughout the year. It includes partners named or hired in 2019 after the cutoff for last year’s list, as well those announced through early February of this year. As a result, our listings may differ from firms’ internal counts.

Partners on the Illinois side of the St. Louis region and the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area are counted as Missouri attorneys. Our numbers do not include newly hired associates, of-counsel or non-partner attorneys.

Other notable figures:

• More than half of this year’s new partners practice in the St. Louis region. There were 88 reported on the Missouri side of the metro area and five in Illinois. The Kansas City had 67 partners on the Missouri side and another two in Kansas. Eleven were reported elsewhere in Missouri, including seven in Springfield, three in Jefferson City and Columbia, and one in Cape Girardeau.
• Saint Louis University was the most popular law school in this year’s partner class. Thirty-two of this year’s new partners earned their law degrees from SLU, followed by 29 at Washington University in St. Louis. The University of Missouri boasted 24 grads, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City had 22. Another 34 partners attended law schools in neighboring Kansas, Illinois and Iowa.

Freelance researcher Jennie Goodman contributed to this report.

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