142 legal secretaries surveyed and not one preferred working with a woman partner.

Why? Lawprof Felice Batlan elicited these comments:

• “Females are harder on their female assistants, more detail oriented, and they have to try harder to prove themselves, so they put that on you. And they are passive aggressive where a guy will just tell you the task and not get emotionally involved and make it personal.”

• “I just feel that men are a little more flexible and less emotional than women. This could be because the female partners feel more pressure to perform.”

• “Female attorneys have a tendency to downgrade a legal secretary.”

• “I am a female legal secretary, but I avoid working for women because [they are] such a pain in the ass! They are too emotional and demeaning.”

• “Female attorneys are either mean because they're trying to be like their male counterparts or too nice/too emotional because they can't handle the stress. Either way, their attitude/lack of maturity somehow involves you being a punching bag.”

• Women lawyers have “an air about them.”

The most obvious theme there is: emotion. It's the old: Women are more emotional. A secondary theme is: Women display the effects of the discrimination they've experienced. It's a complex mix, apparently.

Obviously, the secretaries' perspectives are subjective, and they themselves are women (95% of those surveyed were) so whatever is true of women — they're emotional/they're victims of discrimination — would, presumably, also be true of them.