The 120% Solution

Women have been suing to get nearly everything from a table down at Mory's to a baseball umpire's uniform. Now they are successfully using the law against the profession itself. Five years ago, 13 women law students and recent graduates took on ten blue-chip "Wall Street" law firms. Partners in those firms are among the brightest attorneys in the country and fight on for decades even in seemingly hopeless cases. But the feminists have done remarkably well against the lawyers' home lairs. As of last week, four of the firms agreed to settle the suits by changing their hiring and recruitment practices.

Of the firms originally sued, two are still fighting the charges and four defeated the women plaintiffs. But the four feminist victories are so impressive, said a judge who handled one case, that they "may provide a useful pattern" for firms throughout the country.

Complex Formula. The approach he praised provides for a quota system in hiring. Rogers & Wells (senior partner: former Secretary of State William Rogers) has agreed, for instance, to observe a complex "120% formula" in making job offers over the next three years. The formula is based on the number of women in the graduating classes of the twelve law schools (among them: Yale, Harvard, the University of Virginia) at which the firm does almost all its interviewing. This year women make up 21.3% of those classes; as a result, at least 25.56% (120% times 21.3%) of all the job offers Rogers & Wells makes will be to women. A similar formula will apply to summer hiring. But the agreement also made it clear that people hired under the quota would be every bit as qualified as those outside it.

Judith Lichtman, executive director of the Women's Legal Defense Fund, cheers the Rogers & Wells decision as the "first big victory of the feminist bar against a law firm." She adds: "Even the big firms are realizing that it is very expensive to defend a lawsuit." Says Columbia Law School's Harriet Rabb, who worked on all the cases: "What we have done is go after the most progressive firms, but there are still firms all over the country that do not have minorities or women in them."

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