"I can make your life difficult. On the other hand, I can be helpful."

Dialogue from The Godfather? No--it's an actual exchange between two partners in a law firm that's reported in the latest findings by PAR (Project for Attorney Retention) and MCCA (Minority Corporate Counsel Association).

Shocked? Well, I am.

Though I'm pretty familiar with the depressing statistics about women lawyers--that they make up only 16 percent of equity partners and earn $66,000 less than their male counterparts--I'm astounded  that nearly a third of the 700 women partners surveyed by PAR and MCCA report being "bullied, threatened, or intimidated out of origination credit."  

And yes, the bullies were male partners, says Joan Williams, director of PAR. "I don't know of one story of a woman pressuring another woman for origination credit," she says. "Zero is a pretty compelling number." 

What's more, the survey finds that the majority of women partners feel they are getting shafted where it really counts: compensation. More than half of women equity partners and two-thirds of women income partners and minority partners are unhappy about their compensation. This contrasts with an earlier study, says the PAR and MCCA report, which found that 71 percent of men "reported high levels of satisfaction with their compensation systems."

And lest you think these are problems of small firms in backward towns, three-quarters of the study's respondents work in firms with over 250 lawyers, while only 4 percent work in firms of ten or fewer lawyers.

"The important negotiations for money and power take place out of public view, so it's not surprising that unsavory things happen," says Williams. One big problem, adds Williams, is that women are still locked out of management and compensation committees. (One-fifth of the women surveyed said that there are no women at all on the committee governing compensation at their firm; and about half say that there's only one woman. As for minority women, they barely exist at all on those committees.)

Want more evidence that law partnerships are a boys' club? Half of the women say they are trotted out for client pitches but then are excluded from the actual work. "Clients will be surprised that the attorney that they think [is working on the matter] is not getting the credit," says Roberta Liebenberg, chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. 

That kind of exclusionary practice, adds Williams, undercuts the "old canard that there's this 22 percent pay gap in equity compensation [because] women don't have time for rainmaking activities." She adds that "firms use motherhood as an explanation" for why women aren't more successful at rainmaking.

In fact, adds Williams, few women cite work/life balance issues as impediments to their career. "PAR started off by focusing on problems of the maternal wall"--that is, challenges faced by working mothers, says Williams. But what emerged in the report is that established women face "dramatic evidence of in-group favoritism," says Williams. For these women, not getting their fair share was the big gripe. "Many more said, 'I deserved origination credit and didn't get it,'" says Williams. "These are women who wanted careers and ran with it."

The report is chock-full of examples how women are excluded from the club, and how they are punished when they try to challenge the system. (Says one woman: "I know that I will be punished [for] raising my concerns, and yet know that I'll be mistreated if I don't.") And let's not even get into how minority women feel, which merits a whole other discussion. 

Suffice it to say, the emotions of the women came through loud and clear. I found the report surprisingly riveting. I don't believe there's a plot to keep women out, but it's hard to read the report without getting angry. 

If you have topics you'd like to discuss, or information to share for The Careerist, e-mail chief blogger Vivia Chen at [email protected].