Partner Karol Corbin Walker, Esq. featured in “The Practice,” Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, November 2024

The Practice, November 2024 Issue, Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession
Excerpted from American Bar Association report, Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers, released by the ABA Commission on Women.

An interview with Karol Corbin Walker, chair, ABA Commission on Women in the Profession

The Practice: I understand you began your tenure as chair of the ABA Commission on Women this year, so the report, Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers, must have already begun, but I’d love to start by asking what you see as the most eye-opening aspect of the report’s findings on the challenges faced by lawyers with caregiving responsibilities?

Karol Corbin Walker: I just completed my first year as chair, and the report was already in the works, and it just happened to be released during my leadership. It is an incredible report, and the Commission’s research, I believe, brought to light with concrete statistical evidence that there is a maternal wall.

People always talk about the motherhood penalty, but it’s broader—it’s a maternal wall in the legal profession. Based on the results of the study, women with children are far more likely than men with children to experience demeaning comments, lack of access to professional development opportunities, denial of salary increase or bonus, and a lack of professional sponsors or mentors. It’s the Commission’s hope that by highlighting these findings that were uncovered in the research, as well as presenting recommendations, which you saw at the end of the report, that they’ll be able to help alleviate the biases toward mothers and child caregivers and that those . . . in the legal sphere in the workplace can make a difference and act upon it vigilantly.

Read more at the full article.