“Summer school get to losing students / But the CPD getting new recruitment / Our summer don’t get no shine no more.” – Chance the Rapper
Last week, the American Lawyer released its latest Diversity Scorecard survey. As we’ve explained before, the Am Law rankings focus exclusively on the percentage of minority lawyers and partners at a firm, in terms of racial and ethnic minorities.
Once again, there’s not a lot of movement at the top. As David Lat noted last year, “You can’t change a law firm’s demographics overnight, which explains why firms with high ranks for diversity tend to keep those high ranks. In other words, law firms need to renew their commitment to diversity year after year; diversity problems don’t lend themselves to quick fixes.”
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Congratulations to the top five firms in Am Law’s 2016 Diversity Scorecard:
1. White & Case
2. Fragomen
3. Wilson Sonsini
4. Wood Smith
5. Fenwick & West
It is no surprise that White & Case remains the top-ranking firm for diversity for the third consecutive year, and the other firms on this list are all quite familiar to the top of the Diversity Scorecard as well. At least 25 percent of attorneys in each of the firms on this top five list are minorities.
As for the rest of the Am Law 200 and NLJ 250, minority lawyers stood at 15.02 percent in 2015, slightly higher than a year earlier. The percentage of partners who were minority lawyers also rose a bit, to 8.22 percent from 7.7 percent last year, according to the Am Law survey.
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Since 2002, more than 20 percent of law school graduates have been minorities, according to the American Bar Association. At the top law schools that traditionally feed recruits to elite law firms, the percentage of minority students hovers around 30 percent, with some top-tier law schools closing in on 40 percent, as noted by Law 360. But despite a decades-old pipeline of minority grads, there remains a disproportionately low number of minorities who stay in Biglaw, and even fewer who advance to the highest ranks. As Am Law’s MP McQueen notes:
Evidence that the so-called leaky pipeline of minority lawyers starts early can be seen in NALP survey results showing that racial and ethnic minorities accounted for a much higher share of summer associates: 31.16 percent. And since 2000, the percentage of minority law school graduates has ranged from 20 percent to more than 26 percent, according to the American Bar Association, NALP says. But those numbers are not reflected in the percentage of minority lawyers among Big Law associates. NALP executive director James Leipold says, ‘We continue to see women and minorities leave [law firms] at disproportionately high rates.’
NALP’s 2005 report on attrition revealed “that 42 percent of male associates of color leave their law firms within 28 months. Within 55 months, 78 percent have left…. while minority female attorneys have the highest attrition rate, at 41 percent within 28 months and 81 percent within 55 months.”
In 2010, the ABA highlighted a study that revealed 25 percent of law firms are to blame for high minority attrition numbers. Above the Law also covered these findings. In this year’s ABA cover story, “Minority Women are Disappearing from BigLaw and Here’s Why,” Liane Jackson wrote that 85 percent of minority female attorneys in the U.S. will quit large firms within seven years of starting their practice.
This year’s Vault/MCCA Law Firm Diversity Survey has also confirmed that diversification of law firms is moving at a snail’s pace – minority lawyers now represent 15 percent of attorneys at surveyed firms, compared to 13.8 percent in 2007.
The Diversity Survey revealed that the hiring of African-American attorneys and law students has actually declined as their attrition has increased, resulting in law firms employing fewer black lawyers than they did eight years ago. And lawyers of color continue to leave their firms at a disproportionate rate, according to the Diversity Survey.
To address the status quo, firms will need to examine their past diversity and inclusion initiatives, current situation, and recruiting strategy. It is important to remember that if a firm’s culture isn’t consistent with its recruiting initiatives, it will continue to suffer from the corroding pipeline problem.
Does your law firm have any plans to resolve the issues that corrode the pipeline to partnership?
Renwei Chung is passionate about writing, technology, psychology, and economics. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.