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.