New data from The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reveals a record level of representation for women, people of color and LGBTQ individuals in U.S. law firms — especially for women, who now constitute 55.44% of summer associates.
The percentage of women summer associates in 2024 is the second highest on record, even with the 0.7 percentage point drop, the first decline since 2013, according to NALP’s annual “Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms,” based on information from the 2024 NALP Directory of Legal Employers.
After comprising the majority of associates for the first time in 2023, women continue to make gains, growing to 51.62% of all associates in 2024 (a +1.3-percentage point increase).
The proportion of LGBTQ summer associates continues to grow at a faster rate compared to lawyers overall. Nearly 13% of summer associates identify as LGBTQ, whereas the percentage among all lawyers is 5.13%.
The data on summer associates signals this growth could be sluggish in coming years, particularly for those that identify as Black or African American. After declining in 2023, the percentage of summer associates of color improved by 0.8 percentage point in 2024, reaching a new high of 43.07%.
Nikia Gray, executive director of NALP, said it’s important to recognize that associates of color still convert to partners at much lower rates than White associates, which results in a nearly 20 percentage point disparity between this cohort’s representation at the partnership level compared to that at the associate level.
“To put that disparity into context, at the current rate of growth, it will take nearly 27 years for the representation of partners of color to reach parity with that of associates of color today — in other words, much too long,” Gray said.
She said most of the growth summer associates of color experienced can be attributed to a significant increase in Asian summer associates.
2024 highlights
The percentage of associates of color increased by 1.3 percentage points to 31.46%, a new record high. This increase can be attributed to growth in the percentage of women associates of color, which rose by 1.2 points to 18.76%.
In 2024, the percentage of women partners grew by 1.1 percentage points to 28.83% and the percentage of partners of color improved by 0.7 percentage point to 12.73%. However, both women and people of color remain significantly underrepresented within the partnership ranks.
Women of color comprised more than 5% of all partners for the first time in 2024.
Within multi-tier law firms, White men remain disproportionately represented within the equity partner ranks. In 2024, just 24.8% of equity partners were women and only 10.2% were people of color.
By geography, Silicon Valley and Miami were the locations with the highest percentage of lawyers of color, at 41.86% and 37.29%, respectively. San Francisco and Silicon Valley had the largest share of women lawyers at 49.05% and 46.08%.
Although reporting of gender non-binary lawyers remains limited since NALP first began collecting data in 2020, the figure has grown each year. In 2024, 108 non-binary lawyers and 32 non-binary summer associates were reported by law firms, compared to 79 non-binary lawyers and 27 non-binary summer associates in 2023.
Overall, 2.54% of lawyers identified as having a disability. This percentage was higher for associates (3.20%) as compared to partners (1.78%).
