92% Of Biglaw Partners Are White, Is This Problematic?
It would be great if the legal industry reflected the diversity of people and culture in our country, but this has never been the case.
“If you look close you’ll see it consist of a smile that hurts, an ice grill, and a trace of trauma / Little bit of his father, another criterion that’s no different from a young Liberian.” — Lupe Fiasco
Last year, I highlighted the statistics of the legal industry. I was surprised to discover that 92% of Biglaw partners nationally were white. Is this surprising to you? The more I looked into other industries, the more it seemed like this percentage was rather common at the executive/management level.
Many people love sports and are drawn to them because they believe the respective platforms operate on level playing fields. A basketball rim is ten feet high wherever a player competes – a high school gym in Hickory, the historic Butler Fieldhouse, or the Boston Garden. But what happens when the playing field isn’t level? What happens when people stop believing a system is fair? I am curious about institutional discrimination and disparate treatment in a system. When does it exist? I want to understand the impacts of an uneven playing field. When is a system’s biases, preferences, narratives, dynamics, and environment inherently unfair? When is a system a de facto old boys’ club? When is this acceptable?
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To believe I am advocating for diversity in Biglaw just for diversity’s sake would be to mistake my point entirely. To believe I am advocating for diversity at the expense of performance, diligence, and results is to misread this column. Hiring qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds does not lower the bar, it helps organizations to overcome unconscious bias. I have no problems with a true meritocracy, although there could be potential problems with an extreme implementation of it. Most believe America is a true meritocracy, but is it? This idea has been examined here, here, here, here, and here. The great thing for our country and for the legal profession is that if we are unhappy with the status quo, we can make a difference. We can affect change. By focusing on diversity and inclusion, we can level the playing field.
The 92% diversity statistic is common across many different industries in our country:
- 92% of Biglaw partners nationally are White;
- 92% of Hollywood executives and over 92% of Oscar voters are White;
- 92% of senior officials in the financial industry in Chicago are White;
- 92% of Congress is Christian and over 92% of House Republicans are male;
- 92% of software developers are male; and
- 92% of children’s books in the U.S. are about White people and over 92% of writers reviewed by the New York Times are White.
I believe implicit bias is the silent killer of diversity in the legal profession. I believe unconscious bias is a material cause for this 92% effect across various industries in our country. As I highlighted here, by 2042 it is projected that no one race or ethnicity will be a majority in America. It would be great if the legal industry reflected the diversity of people and culture in our country, but this has never been the case.
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As Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel & Executive Vice President (Legal and Corporate Affairs), notes, “[t]o better understand the situation, it helps to compare diversity in the legal profession to three other professions with broad education or licensing requirements: physicians and surgeons, financial managers, and accountants/auditors. Although the percentage of under-represented minorities in each of these professions lags behind the national workforce, the gap between the legal profession and these other professions has actually worsened over the past nine years.”
Which profession is more equipped than ours to tackle complex problems and find reasonable solutions? The issue isn’t whether we can disrupt the status quo bias in the legal profession. We know we can. The question is, do you find the 92% diversity statistic troubling?
Renwei Chung is the DEI Columnist at Above the Law. He currently serves as a Board Advisor for The Diversity Movement (TDM), whose integrated approach enables law firms to build and strengthen culture by tying real-world business outcomes to DEI initiatives via a scalable subscription-based employee experience platform. And he is excited to host TDM’s and Footnote 4’s new podcast Charge the Wave — focused on entrepreneurs, executives, and icons who are assiduously building companies, cultures, and communities.
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