There’s been a lot of ink spilled over the recent survey which laid out the cold hard numbers that detail just how much less women partners make than their male counterparts — it’s 44 percent, for the record. Now Joan C. Williams and Marina Multhaup for the National Law Journal have dug into all of the related data to determine concrete things that women partners deal with that keep their compensation, on average, behind the men’s.

Here are the top 5 reasons why women partners aren’t paid as much as the guys:

1. Women are pressured to remain service partners

This makes a terrible kind of twisted sense. Equity partners, with the origination credit, use guilt and a desire to benefit clients to keep good lawyers working on matters for their clients. Which… just happens to keep those good lawyers in a lower position at the firm. And wouldn’t you know it? Women face this pressure a lot more than men.

According to Williams and Multhaup:

In a forthcoming survey developed and conducted by the Center for WorkLife Law for the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, only 41 percent of white male lawyers, but 60 percent of women lawyers, reported this [t remain service partners] pressure.

2. They get bullied

So much of partner compensation comes down to who is getting credit for bringing the clients in the door. Given that reality, of course there are bound to be machinations and disputes behind the scenes that determine who is getting paid for the big clients. And Williams and Multhaup report on a survey which indicates women are getting bullied into backing down in those fights:

A 2010 survey of female lawyers found that almost one-third (27 percent) of white female equity partners reported “feeling that a partner had tried to intimidate, threaten, or bully them into backing down in a dispute over origination credit.” For female partners of color, that number was even higher (36 percent). The same survey found that more than 80 percent of women partners reported being denied their fair share of origination credit in the past three years.

3. Men get more credit than they deserve

Welp, here’s a disturbing anecdote, and I am sure this survey respondent isn’t alone:

“Some of the young male partners are just handed shared origination because ‘their brains also brought in the client.’ I have not had the same level of shared financial opportunity, despite more years of helping to build the very clients whom I requested to share,” said one respondent to the 2010 survey.

4. Women are used… as eye candy

But I am sure women go to client meetings… except, how they get used at client meetings can be problematic.

The 2010 survey found that more than half of women equity partners reported being used as diverse “eye candy” on pitches but then not receiving origination credit or work resulting from successful pitches.

5. Women get jobbed for having babies

And of course, having babies only screws the professional prospects of one half of the baby-making equation:

Many firms count origination-related metrics as “zero” for the months women are on maternity leave, which artificially depresses their compensation for a year, and in some cases two — per baby.

These are only some of the issues that are keeping women behind in compensation.

What the Partner Pay Gap Tells Us About Bias [National Law Journal]

Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).