This paper studies the gender earning gap among associate lawyers in the United States. The legal profession traditionally uses performance pay to reward lawyers. We find that while individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the gender earnings gap, performance measures – namely, hours billed and new client revenue - explain most of the remaining part of the gap. To understand why female lawyers do not perform as well as male lawyers, we analyze three hypotheses: explicit discrimination, child-rearing, and differences in preferences. We find that the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to be a law-firm partner explain a large part of the difference in performance.

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