Women May Be More Affected by Law School Stresses

Despite the rising enrollment of women in law schools, new research shows that women face particular pressures that may explain why they fall off the legal pipeline.

After trailing men for decades, women now enroll in law school at an almost equal rate.

But competent and motivated females say they sometimes feel alienated and invisible, according to a study by prominent Columbia professors.

Psychologists Geraldine Downey, Bonita London, and Shauna Mace used a longitudinal daily diary study conducted at Columbia Law School and New York University Law School to document the ways that law schools’ policies and educational environment make it especially difficult for women to navigate the system. These factors may stifle long-term career development.

“The reason we were interested in law school in general is that it’s a professional area in which men and women enter in equal numbers, yet women, by the end of law school, don’t seem to be doing as well” on concrete measures of success, said Downey, who also serves as vice provost of diversity initiatives.

For example, women hold fewer partnerships in major firms than men do. “Their interest in pursuing highly competitive law positions is lower than men,” Downey said.

The study sampled the experiences of 102 law students (54.5 percent female and 43 percent Caucasian) and included a background questionnaire and daily diary entries over the initial three-week period and follow-ups every semester. The background questions, answered before the students entered law school, showed very little difference on objective measures of competence.

But over time, the researchers started to see differences emerging, such that minority and female students are starting to report feeling more invisible in law school, feeling more alienated, and feeling less of a sense of belonging.

Some researchers said the Socratic method in law classes—in which a professor tests a student’s knowledge in front of a large lecture—proved particularly threatening, as it put individual pressure on the student in a way that may reinforce stereotypes. When a student didn’t know the answer to a question, he or she felt that his or her group was branded as less competent.

“For a lot of people, speaking up in a large class, especially if there’s something distinctive about you [such as gender or race], can be very threatening. In psychology, that’s called the spotlight phenomenon,” especially “if their opinion is perceived as opposite to that of the group,” Downey said.

The discomfort women feel in law school has little to do with intelligence and confidence, said George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility Susan Sturm. “Law school is a culture that rank orders people on a single metric of success, measured by a single exam at the end of the semester, where performance in class establishes a pecking order within the social setting of the students."

“Law school is set up so that classroom participation is about performance rather than necessarily about learning.”

As one way of ameliorating the stress, Sturm suggested decreasing class size, as it is more conducive to participation and engagement. But “class size is one variable and not the only variable,” she said. “If you have a small group class that is still conducted as a class that creates high-stakes situations where every interaction creates the possibility of being evaluated in relation to a criteria in which a group is stereotyped, it’s not necessarily a small group class that would create the opportunity to enable students of color to feel included.”

One student wrote in an article about the study that the Socratic method would be less stressful if “it was done in a more intimate, supportive setting ... I think I’d be able to focus on grappling with the actual issues and concepts.”

Sturm suggested as a more sustainable solution that professors work closely with women and minority students to “give them the opportunity to get constructive feedback, to get support to their development as professionals, to provide intellectual networks—if that doesn’t happen then smaller classes don’t fulfill the need.” Sturm hosted her first-year classes for dinner in her home last week.

Devika Bhushan contributed to this article.