High Minority Attrition Rates Continue To Plague Large Law Firms

Columnist Renwei Chung highlights findings from the annual Vault/MCCA Law Firm Diversity Survey.

Young black woman looking down, worriedIn disbelief our belief is the reason for all this / The tallest building plummet, cracking, and crumbling.” – Kendrick Lamar

This month, Vault.com and The Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) released their annual Vault/MCCA Law Firm Diversity Survey (mcca.vault.com), the legal industry’s most comprehensive tool for measuring law firm diversity, collecting data on race, ethnicity, gender, GLBT identity, and disability status. The annual survey collects data based on the previous calendar year. Approximately 250 law firms participate in the survey each year, representing virtually all of the AmLaw 100 and a majority of the NLJ 250.

According to this year’s report, despite progress in recruitment of diverse attorneys, problems at law firms persist concerning attrition and promotion. Here are some other highlights from their annual survey:

  • The diversification of law firms continues at a slow pace, as minority lawyers now represent 15.0% of attorneys at surveyed firms, compared to 13.8% in 2007.
  • The hiring of African-American attorneys and law students has declined as their attrition has increased, resulting in law firms employing fewer black lawyers than they did eight years ago.
  • Alongside the increased recruitment of minority attorneys, however, lawyers of color continue to leave their firms at a disproportionate rate.
  • Moreover, advances among individual minority groups remain uneven, as the number of black lawyers declines and Asian American attorneys experience slower rates of promotion.
  • Latina and Asian-American female partners are less than 1% of all law firm partners.
  • Although Hispanic lawyers have made the most consistent advances, the number of Latino attorneys, relative to Latinos’ representation in the overall U.S. population, remains far lower than that of other minority groups.

After the 2009 economic crisis, widespread layoffs caused women and minorities in law firms to decline for the first time since the 1990s. According to NALP, “lawyer layoffs disproportionately affected junior and mid-level associate ranks, and because these groups of lawyers were among the most diverse in law firms, it is likely that these layoffs contributed in significant measure to the lower overall percentages that we [saw] in 2010.”

In 2010, the American Bar Association (ABA) highlighted a study that revealed 25% of law firms are to blame for high minority attrition numbers. Above the Law also covered these findings. In this month’s ABA cover story, “Minority Women are Disappearing from BigLaw and Here’s Why,” Liane Jackson notes that 85% of minority female attorneys in the U.S. will quit large firms within seven years of starting their practice.

In Joan Williams’s study “Double Jeopardy? – Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science,” her team interviewed 60 women of color in STEM. In the study, 100% of women of color experienced gender bias. In addition to gender bias, “Women of color also encounter racial and ethnic stereotypes, putting them in ‘a double jeopardy.’” Do women of color face the same ‘double jeopardy’ problem in our profession?

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It is no secret: high minority attrition rates remain a problem for law firms. However, a number of law firms are tackling this problem and achieving progress with regard to diversity and inclusion. We still have a long way to go when it comes to minority attrition rates in Biglaw, but these fine firms give us reason for hope.


Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn

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