Black & Brown Attorneys are RARE: New report assesses minority progress in legal profession.
- Originally published by the Kansas City Daily Record (Kansas City, MO) February 10, 2005
Copyright 2005 Dolan Media Newswires
By: KC Daily Record Staff
Minorities
are faring significantly worse in the legal profession than in other
professions, minority entry into law has slowed considerably since a
growth period from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, initial job
opportunities for minorities in the law differ considerably from those
available to whites, minorities are grossly underrepresented in
top-level legal jobs and progress has been especially slow for minority
women lawyers.
That is the assessment of
"Miles to Go: Progress of Minorities in the Legal Profession," a newly
issued report of the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession.
The report has not been adopted by the ABA House of Delegates and does not represent association policy.
As
with two previous "Miles to Go" reports, the most recent study reviews
available data from academic, government, professional and popular
sources, draws conclusions about the status of minority law students
and lawyers in various practice settings, and urges steps for bar
associations, legal employers, law schools and individual lawyers to
increase progress.
Elizabeth Chambliss, a professor of law at New York Law School, prepared the current report and those issued in 2000 and 1998.
Minority
representation among lawyers is less than 9.7 percent, compared to 20.8
percent among accountants and auditors, 24.6 percent among physicians
and surgeons and 18.2 percent among college and university teachers,
says Chambliss, citing U.S. Census figures. Among students, minority
representation has dropped the past two years, from 20.6 percent in
2001-02 to 20.3 percent in 2003-04, with the biggest slippage among African Americans.
After
law school graduation, minorities are less likely than whites to win
judicial clerkship positions, or to go into private practice, and more
likely to begin their careers in government or public interest jobs. In
top-level jobs, fewer than 4.4 percent of partners in the nation's
largest 250 firms and only 4.3 percent of corporate general counsel are
minority. Chambliss reports that minority women are almost completely
excluded from top private sector jobs.
Chambliss
cites an over reliance by law schools on Law School Admissions Test
scores and by legal employers on law school rankings, class rank, law
review membership and clerkships as barriers to minority students and
lawyers, and adds that minorities in law firms lack access to clients
and business networks.
In the new report,
the commission calls on bar associations for increased and more
group-specific research on distribution of lawyers by gender and race
and on demographics of lawyers in different practice settings;
development of a systematic agenda for national research on minority
lawyers and of guidelines for and coordination of regional research;
and heightened fundraising for research and program development to
promote full and equal participation of minorities in the profession.
The report urges law schools to actively pursue racial
diversity among students and faculty, investing in admissions
procedures that Chambliss says will increase costs to comply with
Supreme Court rulings in cases involving the University of Michigan and
the university's law school, and to teach students about the history
and structure of the profession, conditions of practice in various
employment settings and the dynamics of professional advancement. It
calls for law schools to compile data on the careers of their own
graduates, linking post-graduate placement information to admissions
credentials.
The key to progress in law
firms is a visible and sustained commitment, in such ways as spelling
out diversity concerns in a business plan and insuring that
responsibility for diversity initiatives is assigned to people with
formal and informal authority, says Chambliss. She also calls on law
firms to hold leaders accountable for producing results, in such ways
as factoring diversity into partner compensation formulas.
Individual
lawyers can mentor minority law students and lawyers, join and support
minority bar associations and initiate diversity efforts in their work
environments, says Chambliss. Lawyers in leadership roles should
participate in programming and events where minority lawyers are likely
to be present, and marshal organizational resources to promote
diversity.
- Combined -- Latinos and Blacks Make up Only 9% of all Attorneys [more]