Why is the Legal Industry So White and Male? The Inside Perspective from a Minority Lawyer.
Have you ever visited a law firm or had a chance to attend a legal conference, court proceedings, or networking event? If you have, you could probably tell right from the outset that the crowd was pretty homogeneous and mostly white. Am I wrong? Well, if you haven’t had a chance to interact with the legal industry much, I’m telling you that diversity is not one of its strengths. I’ve worked at laws firms and in-house legal departments in the U.S. and abroad for about eighteen years and can tell you firsthand that the legal industry has a long way to go in its diversity journey.
Before I became a lawyer in the U.S., I practiced law in Brazil for many years. My first legal job in the U.S. was a summer associate (i.e., an intern) at a large firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They were really excited to have me at first, but it was hard for me to make a meaningful connection with other lawyers at the firm. At first, I couldn’t really understand why, but later I started to get a sense for what may have been happening. Although I am fluent in English, it is not my first language, and I was culturally very different from everyone else. I didn’t grow up with American football or baseball, so I couldn’t make small talk about the local sports teams. I didn’t grow up in the U.S., so I didn’t understand certain jokes that require cultural context. I took the bus to work and was probably the only person in the entire law firm who didn’t have a car. There were cultural nuances of how people interacted that I probably missed. I worked very hard the entire summer to improve whatever I was told needed to be improved regarding my work product. But at the end of the day, I felt really lonesome because I had this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t fit in. My summer associate year was in 2009, a very difficult year for the U.S. economy and particularly for the legal industry. I was one of several summer associates, but the firm decided mid-summer that only one of us would be hired after it realized how significant the recession was. I could feel that I wouldn’t make the cut; and I didn’t. I wondered for a while why I couldn’t just fit in like everybody else did. What was I missing? That questions stayed with me for a while.
After I graduated from law school in the U.S., I got a job at a national litigation law firm. The interview process was great, and I really liked all the lawyers I spoke with. A few months into the job I had made some friends, but I still stood out like a sore thumb. I started to feel like everybody appreciated that I was “different” but at the same time there was this unspoken expectation that I act/be the same as everyone else in order to fit in — they expected me to talk about football and baseball, to know who Brett Favre was (you can laugh all you want, but I had no idea!), to understand certain cultural nuances, and not to take offense when opposing counsel made fun of my accent in a phone deposition. Although this firm had minority lawyers in other offices, I was one of three minority lawyers in their 35+ lawyer Minneapolis office. I liked the firm and appreciated all that they did for me professionally, but I still did not feel like I belonged. Eventually I left because my husband had a job in another city, and I decided to go in-house. Being an immigrant at a quintessentially American enterprise can be difficult — what I learned is that my technical knowledge and abilities would only go so far, and they wouldn’t necessarily create a sense of belonging.
But why should you care about my story? Well, my story is the same story of so many diverse lawyers in the U.S., and it shows a problematic pattern. If you ask around, law firms and legal departments will probably tell you that they really want to have a more diverse team, but they have difficulties in recruiting and retaining diverse talent. I get it — I’ve been there. As a manager to a legal team in my in-house career at a Fortune 500 company, I found it very difficult to recruit minority lawyers. There simply aren’t that many of us out there. Even when you find the right talent, retention can be challenging. This is largely due to the lack of awareness about implicit racial and gender biases, and the lack of inclusive cultures in the legal world.
In the wake of the uprising around the country after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, many companies and their leadership teams have publicly repudiated racism and committed to donating millions of dollars to racial equality causes. Many law firms followed suit. My LinkedIn feed was flooded with numerous posts about Juneteenth, Black Lives Matter and diversity generally. That’s all great and, quite frankly, necessary to fund efforts to end systemic racism; however, there will be no meaningful change unless and until there’s adequate racial representation in the legal profession overall.
All of this got me thinking about my own path and the big white male elephant in the room that is the lack of diversity in the legal profession. During the entire time that I’ve practiced law, I have worked with no more than four Black lawyers in the law firms and legal departments I’ve been a part of. Four! While practicing in the U.S. (since 2010) I have been the only Latina lawyer in my local offices. I’ve had a few Asian colleagues.
No wonder a 2018 study by the University of California found endemic racial and gender bias in the legal profession. This is a stark picture. If you are a minority lawyer, it becomes really clear, really early into your professional life that you will not have many colleagues, managers or mentors who look like you. But because I don’t want you to just take my word for it, I dug into some industry data to illustrate my point.
According to the American Bar Association (ABA) the legal profession remains one of the least diverse of any profession. Data from the ABA’s 2019 National Lawyer Population Survey shows that 85% of active attorneys identify as white/Caucasian, while only 5% are African American, 5% are Hispanic, 2% are Asians, 1% are Native Americans, and 2% are Multiracial. Wow — 85% white/Caucasian. The data also shows that not much has happened to improve those numbers in an entire decade (these results are pretty much the same as they were in 2009). To give you some perspective, as of 2016, African Americans made up 13.3% and Hispanic or Latinx individuals made up 17.8% of the total U.S. population.
If we dig into the gender statistics, the data shows that 64% of active lawyers identify as male while 36% identify as female. The female representation seems super low, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. And these numbers have barely moved about 5 percentage points in 10 years. In terms of private practice, although women make up roughly 48% of summer associates and 45% of associates in the U.S., they only make up 20% of partners and just 18% of equity partners. Minority women and African Americans are the least represented in the field, with the former representing less than 3% of law firm partners, and African Americans representing less than 2%. The story is not much different for in-house legal departments, where women and minorities seldomly make general counsel or other high-profile leadership roles.
How can that be? I guarantee you that it has nothing to do with women and minorities not being qualified enough or not wanting leadership legal jobs. Then why, why is it so hard for law firms and legal departments to have diverse teams? There’s certainly a lot (I mean, a lot!) of lip service to diversity and inclusion in the corporate world, but it doesn’t translate to the current make-up of in-house legal departments. The same is true for law firms. Diversity in the legal field is critical because lawyers represent people of all walks of life, and having diverse law teams ensures that bias and discrimination are reduced in practice.
The issue of lack of diversity in the legal profession starts way before law school. In fact, law school is the least diverse graduate school program. The least diverse of all! Think about this for a minute. It’s a big deal. From performance in standardized tests to the law school application process, minority candidates are behind not only in numbers but also in performance. In fact, they are less likely to pass the bar exam on the first attempt given that studying for the Bar exam is a full-time job and many minority candidates cannot afford to dedicate full time attention to it. This is a social-economic issue because minority students generally fall into lower income categories than Caucasians.
The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) analyzed 2019 law school admission numbers from the ABA, which show that African American students made up 8% of the incoming class, Hispanics 11.1%, Asians 9.4%, and Caucasian/white students totaled 62.5% of the incoming class. Needless to say, the admission of minority students is low.
I think the point is well illustrated and the white elephant that I mentioned earlier in this article has become a little bit whiter and a little bit bigger. If one thing is clear so far, it is that we have enough studies and data, and we now need to take action. So, what can we do about this?
The first step is to increase the law school pipeline for minority students. If we don’t have more minority law grads, then there’s not much we can do to increase minority representation at law firms, government and in-house legal departments. And if we can’t improve that, we all lose. We lose equality, we lose diversity, we lose the ability to eliminate implicit bias, and we lose perspective. Study after study has showed that diversity is good for business — being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, diligent and hard-working. Law firms, companies, and legal professional groups must invest massively in efforts to educate high school students and undergraduates about the legal profession and the law school admission process.
After George Floyd’s death many law firms pledged to donate millions of dollars to racial equality causes, but I didn’t see a particular commitment to mentoring, coaching, developing and hiring minority law students and young lawyers. It’s time for those firms to put their money where their mouth is. Invest in minority law school candidates. Donate time, resources and money to increase the minority law school pool. Those are your future associates and partners. They will bring more equality into your firms. Scholarships and other financial incentives (either merit-based or need-based) need to be part of this effort as the often-disadvantaged social economic background of minority candidates has a massive impact on their ability to properly prepare for successful law school admission.
For the minority students already in law school, it is very important to implement mentorship programs, both from an academic and a professional standpoint. Internship/clerkship opportunities are also important to help these candidates develop the skills needed to successfully land a job after graduation.
Finally, that takes us to the job market. I’ve observed over the years many diverse lawyers entering the legal profession and struggling to remain at law firms. Like any other lawyer, no matter what race, they first struggle with the pressures of the job. Practicing law is not for the faint of heart. My private practice colleagues out there reading this will know exactly what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, the legal profession is beautiful and very rewarding in so many ways; but it is demanding. Very demanding. Success at a big law firm means working (and billing) many hours, frequently giving up weekends, evenings and holidays, while dealing with a steep learning curve. For minority candidates this could be even harder because they may be the first generation in their family to graduate college, and they may feel under a microscope for being the only minority (or one of the very few), which will likely impact their ability to make meaningful connections with others at the firm. The lack of a sense of belonging severely impacts motivation, engagement, and, ultimately, retention.
I certainly felt that way earlier in my career. Based on my own experience I believe this sense of not belonging is the culprit of retention issues for minority lawyers. Despite the best intentions of firms and legal departments, unless they are committed to a long-term holistic approach to diversity, there will be no meaningful progress. I applaud all the firms that have recently donated money and time to racial equality and social justice organizations, but that is just one piece of the puzzle. That alone is not going to increase diversity in the legal industry. There needs to be an effort to increase the law school pipeline for minority students and coaching and mentoring of minority law students. Finally, if firms and legal departments do not commit to recruiting, retaining, and developing diverse lawyers, we will not see meaningful change.
