In the early 2000s, University of Exeter psychology researchers Michelle K. Ryan and Alexander Haslam first proposed the glass cliff theory: when women and minority leaders are appointed to positions of power during moments of crisis and instability, often with little support and a barrage of attention. The concept builds on the glass ceiling, the widely referenced invisible barrier preventing underrepresented groups from reaching the highest levels of leadership across industries.
Within law firms, researchers have found the glass cliff pervasive around case selection, assigning high-stakes litigation, usually engulfed by media attention, to minority attorneys without the required resources to manage the matter’s fragility.
Law offices are rife with subjective decision-making and rigid hierarchies, conditions that allow glass cliff appointments to persist unregulated. For legal administrators intent on preventing these precarious appointments, they’ll need to redesign the internal processes that govern success, support, case selection and mentorship.
In a 2007 experimental study published in the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Ryan, Haslam and co-researcher Julie S. Ashby simulated glass cliff dynamics within discretionary case allocation. After sampling 114 undergraduate British law students, researchers found that females were more likely to be named lead counsel to high-risk cases associated with “negative publicity and criticism.” Male and female attorneys were equally likely to be chosen to lead low-risk cases, those framed as “easy and trouble-free.”
A 2023 field study printed in the Journal of Management examined executive appointments at over 26,000 U.S. public firms between 2000 and 2016. Researchers determined that women were more likely to be appointed to a top managerial position when a firm was in a crisis state, and most evidently in contexts of internal promotions, increased investor pressure and in companies with few senior-level women.
The findings coincided with glass cliff research across industries and politics: Women and minority leaders are seen as more suited to manage moments of upheaval, while the leaders who traditionally dominate executive roles — white men — are temporarily perceived as less effective to handle a scandal.
“Management positions are more likely liberated when there is a problem,” Dr. Clara Kulich, a social psychology researcher at the University of Geneva, summarizes.
Glass Cliff Conditions
Crisis appointments are oftentimes disguised as historical achievements in an effort, whether conscious or not, to distract from the present issue. Gender equity researcher Dr. Arin Reeves says a minority lawyer will be named first chair on a troubled litigation or elected to lead a faltering practice group, inheriting a problem she didn’t create yet will be judged for solving.
“If we have the first female CEO ever or the first Black CEO, people are going to talk more about that instead of talking about the fact that we're in a crisis,” Reeves says.
Crisis appointments are oftentimes disguised as historical achievements in an effort, whether conscious or not, to distract from the present issue.
While men still hold the levers of power in most legal spaces, women and minority attorneys have made some progress in representation. Today 41% of U.S lawyers are women and 23% are people of color, according to the American Bar Association’s 2024 Profile of the Legal Profession. The same report said lawyers of color comprised just 12% of all attorneys a decade ago.
But these numbers distract from a sustained attrition problem. Representation tapers as lawyers ascend the career ladder: Women of color account for only 5% of U.S. partners, according to the National Association for Law Placement’s 2024 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms.
The bottleneck reflects the “leaky-pipeline,” a concerning pattern of senior-level women and people of color — at significantly higher rates than men — leaving the law industry at the height of their career. Glass cliffs don’t appear in a vacuum; they emerge from a pipeline that already stifles underrepresented groups from reaching the most prestigious roles.
Dr. Christy Glass, a lead gender studies researcher at Utah State University, says the underrepresentation of women and lawyers of color in leadership roles contributes to glass cliff promotions.
“Whenever you have such a significant imbalance, you are much more prone to make decisions based on bias,” Glass says. “[In] highly skewed environments [with] increased reliance on stereotypes, increased hyper-scrutiny of those in the minority and increased performance pressure, you’re at significant risk of making decisions — hiring, promotion, evaluation and case assignment — based on bias and discretion.”
Prevention: What Administrators Can Do
Behind many of these appointments are sound intentions: Partners and administrators have come to recognize the value in diverse leadership, but they fall distinctly short of delivering meaningful advancement in gender and race opportunity.
Rather than rely on over-publicized appointments that highlight a leader’s identity over their merit, scholars suggest reforms to the structural conditions that propel underrepresented attorneys to glass cliff positions. And, before all else, administrators must recognize the emotional toll and professional risk crisis appointments inflict on women and minority attorneys.
Redefine Success Criteria
For administrators hiring through a crisis or assigning a difficult case, researchers recommend adjusting their criteria for what a successful tenure or result should look like. Managers can’t judge a crisis-era leader by peacetime standards; an administrator’s usual key productive indicators will need tweaking given the instability at hand.
“The success criteria when you’re in crisis or during volatile times [need] to be different than success criteria when everything is golden,” Reeves says. “The success criteria cannot be, ‘Increase the income of a practice group by this much’ like every other practice group leader’s. It has to be, ‘Given that we are in a downward spiral in this situation, the success criteria is keeping the book steady,’ which means not being in the negative at the end of two years.”
