THE LEGAL INDUSTRY’S WAVE of recession-induced layoffs appears
to have hit African American associates particularly hard. At the
“These numbers are actually a validation of what we have been hearing anecdotally over the past year,” says Chicago-based diversity consultant Arin
Reeves. She adds that historical challenges faced by African American associates—a lack of mentors and challenging work—make them especially vulnerable in tight times.
The experience of one African American associate laid off by a large firm
in 2009 is illuminating. This associate says that though he developed mentors
among the firm’s African American partners, none were in his practice group. “I
chose the firm because of its commitment to diversity and mentorship,” he says,
“and to be cast adrift was unsettling.”
Channing Johnson, a Los Angeles–based African American partner at Loeb &
Loeb (number 142 on the Diversity Scorecard), says law firms are generally as
close to meritocracies as one finds in the private sector. Still, he says, the indus-
try has had trouble bringing African American lawyers into the “heart and soul”
of firms where they can build the internal relationships and land the key assign-
ments that breed job security.
Twenty-three firms saw their African American associate ranks fall by more than
40 percent between 2008 and 2009. The biggest absolute number drop came at Sidley Austin, where Barack and Michelle Obama famously met when he was a summer associate and she was an associate. African American associate head count at
Sidley dipped by 47 percent, from 57 to 30. Sidley, which laid off 89 lawyers and 140
staff last March, did not answer calls and e-mails seeking comment.
At Kilpatrick Stockton, the African American associate ranks shrank by 46 percent between 2008 and 2009, from 26 to 14. In a statement, co–managing partner Diane Prucino said the firm has enhanced its diversity initiative in 2010. Washington,
D.C.–based Dickstein Shapiro, meanwhile, registered a 42 percent drop in African
American associates, from 19 to 11. The firm said in a statement that “retention is
a serious matter [that] management, in close collaboration with our African American associates, has been addressing with particular urgency.” —DREW COMBS
The Best and the Worst
These firms had the biggest gains—or losses—in their proportions of African American,
Asian American, or Hispanic lawyers.
AFRICAN AMERICAN
ASIAN AMERICAN
HISPANIC
Dow Lohnes
2.04%
Cleary Gottlieb
4.17%
Fennemore Craig
1.82%
BIGGEST GAINS
Stinson Morrison
1.63%
Kenyon & Kenyon
3.99%
Godfrey & Kahn
1.20%
Wyatt, Tarrant
1.42%
Boies, Schiller
2.46%
Foley Hoag
1.11%
BIGGEST LOSSES
Morris, Manning
- 2.56%
Gibbons
- 3.04%
Shutts & Bowen
- 2.54%
Gibbons
- 2.17%
Milbank, Tweed
- 2.53%
Best Best
-1.86%
Kilpatrick Stockton - 2.14%
Hughes Hubbard
- 2.43%
Boies, Schiller
-1.72%
diversity by new hires at the level at which we
had been doing in prior years.” (The firm reported that 9. 9 percent of its lawyers were minorities, down from 10.1 percent last year.)
Some firms said that as a result of bud-
get cuts, they had scaled back sponsorship of
outside diversity groups or tried to find ways
to produce internal diversity programs more
cheaply. “We didn’t cut any projects,” wrote
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (number 78 in the
Diversity Scorecard) in a response that echoed
similar comments from other firms, “but we
did in some cases limit their scope.”
What will be the long-term impact of this
year’s drop in minority lawyers? “My fear is
that even though it is a half-percentage point
[decline], it’s a half-percentage point that will
not correct itself, and it will increase over the
next two years,” says consultant Reeves. In ad-
dition to slower recruiting, Reeves says, “we
also saw a lot of minorities quietly being ‘eval-
uated out’ in the last quarter.”
Several long-term trends will make it hard
for firms to regain lost ground. Summer and
first-year classes are likely to stay small, as
clients balk at paying high rates for junior as-
sociates and firms rethink staffing levels. Plus,
the pool of minority law school graduates isn’t
growing. Alvarez, Reeves, and Gupta all cited a
study by Columbia Law School’s Lawyering in
the Digital Age Clinic that found fewer African
Americans and Mexican Americans starting law
school in 2008 than in 1993. ABA data shows
the number of minority J.D.s stuck at about 22
percent of all new lawyers in recent years.
A permanent drop in the minority associate
ranks would eventually mean fewer minority
partners—and perhaps fewer future minority
lawyers, says Alvarez. “If [minority students]
see the profession going negative instead of
improving, that could have additional impact
on the decision to go to law school,” he says.
“I think [the decline] needs to turn around
soon, or we could see a negative spiral.”
Still, Alvarez says, clients aren’t letting up
the pressure on law firms to diversify. “The
clients have not stopped talking about it,” he
says. Just listen to Roderick Palmore, general
counsel of General Mills, Inc., whose 2004
Call to Action set off a major diversity push by
U.S. general counsel. “The challenge is that
we cannot look at these statistics and these
results and sit still,” he says. “We’re in a dog-
fight.” Adds DuPont’s Sager: “I think [firms]
ought to be concerned how [a decline in di-
versity] is perceived at law schools, in the legal
community, and most of all, by their clients.”
That’s a broad hint if there ever was one.
