Of Course The #ABATECHSHOW Is Full Of White Guys

What can you really expect? The legal industry is in and of itself largely made up of old white dudes.

So in case you didn’t see the post the other day, ATL contributor Jeena Cho noted that the ABA TECHSHOW has a white guy problem.

I was at the party Jeena described in her post, and yes, the room was 98% white. It was also predominantly male. During the ABA TECHSHOW Keynote, Sam Glover noted that the ABA TECHSHOW also has a Keynote Speaker problem, i.e., they’ve all been white guys for the past six years.

Walking around the ABA TECHSHOW Expo floor, I would say that largely held true as well. There was a bit more racial diversity and certainly more gender diversity, but it largely remained a “White Man Affair.” (Note: For everyone that has given Jeena grief for that title, I actually suggested it. So I’ll take the hit on that one.)

But what can you really expect? The legal industry is in and of itself largely made up of old white dudes. Take a look at this demographic snapshot the ABA produced last year.

Seventy percent male and 88.1% White. There is no way that any legal event is not going to be dominated by white guys. It’s not like the high-tech industry is any better. Last year, Gigaom surveyed some of the largest companies in high tech and they look pretty much the same. All the companies were largely male and white-dominated. So is it really that much of a surprise that when you attend a conference that combines the two, that what you end up finding is lots of white men?

Where The Women At?

I searched around on the Expo floor, looking for a woman or a minority who was head of a legal technology company. Someone who might share their perspective from the technology side of the conference, as Jeena had shared her perspective from the lawyer side. As can be expected, it was tough to find someone. But eventually, I connected with Janine Sickmeyer, the founder of NextChapterBK, a cloud-based bankruptcy software platform that launched alongside of the ABA TECHSHOW this year.

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This was Sickmeyer’s second ABA TECHSHOW. She had attended the previous year but only to take pulse on the industry and get a lay of the land on practice management platforms and bankruptcy software. Sickmeyer felt confident in NextChapterBK, but attending the show confirmed that she was on the right path. No other company was focusing on making modern, cloud-based bankruptcy software. I’m not a bankruptcy lawyer but I looked at some of the other players in the bankruptcy software space and was taken aback. A lot of the other bankruptcy software platforms look like they were coded in Visual Basic. C’mon people, get with the times.

Sickmeyer confirmed what Jeena observed in her post — that the ABA TECHSHOW is largely comprised of white guys. “I guess I’m just used to it,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t really even notice anymore, almost all the conventions I go to are that way.” I asked if it made her uncomfortable. “Not really,” she said, “And I’ll actually say that the executives of the other legal technology companies at the ABA TECHSHOW have been very encouraging and welcoming. They were glad to see a legal technology company with a woman founder present. Probably because it’s so rare!”

I also asked Sickmeyer if she thought there was a reason more women or minorities were not present as attendees or presenters. “Speaking solely as a woman, I think it’s often because we don’t like to be in the spotlight,” she said. “I struggle with it as the founder of NextChapterBK because people ask me to talk or present about our company or being a woman who started a tech company.”

We Never Even Had A Mixing Pot

After reading Jeena’s post (and being present for it) and speaking with Sickmeyer, I’m not sure if there is something to be done about the diversity issue at the ABA TECHSHOW. Obviously, the lack of diversity isn’t intentional. It’s merely a reflection of the industry. You can’t force women or minorities to come into law or technology, they have to make that decision themselves.

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I’m your standard white guy. It’s often tough for me to look at situations like these with an informed perspective. I’ll never have the experiences Elie does. But my wife is Korean so I’m also sensitive to the fact that minorities and women can also feel out of place in white, male-dominated situations. And I don’t want them to feel that way.

Yet I also don’t want to try and force diversity inclusion to a level to make things appear not as they are. As a whole, the legal industry is comprised of standard white guys. It’s not the ABA TECHSHOW’s responsibility to try and fix that. They’re just playing the hand they are dealt. If there is a desire for more diversity in the legal industry, that’s a problem that needs to be dealt with in college and law school — encouraging more women and other ethnicities to attend.

But given that the legal industry is still reeling from the Great Recession, technology and optimization are keeping employment low, and the incoming class of law students this year looks to be one of the smallest in decades, I don’t expect we’ll be seeing a huge surge of women or minorities flood into the profession anytime soon.

They’re probably too smart for that.


Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.