There was an increase in diversity in the summer associate and associate ranks, with progress continuing to lag behind at the partnership level, according to the Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
NALP’s report documents significant gains in the percentages of Black associates and summer associates. The percentage of Black associates grew by .6 percentage points to 5.77 percent and the percentage of Black summer associates increased by 0.7 percentage points to nearly 11.85 percent.
Nikia Gray, Executive Director of NALP, said the national dialogue around social issues that was precipitated by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, shined a light on the challenges facing Black communities. This caused many schools and law firms to examine their practices with a lens of reducing the particular barriers to entry facing Black students and lawyers.
“That demonstrates to me that when we, as members of the legal industry, make a concerted effort to drive change, we can make real progress,” Gray said. “That should be heartening to us all.”
Gray said the strides made with associates are a testament to the efforts of schools and recruiting professionals, but a celebration would be premature, given some of the report highlights.
During the 30-year-plus span that NALP has been reporting this data, the representation of people of color and women in the partnership ranks has increased by less than 10 and 16 percentage points.
“While improvements were also made at the partnership level in 2022, progress continues to lag far behind that of associates and summer associates, with people of color and women comprising just 11.40% and 26.65% of all partners, respectively, in 2022,” NALP stated. “For comparison, 28.32% of associates are people of color and 49.42% are women. The percentage of Black and Latinx partners each increased by just 0.1 percentage points to 2.32% and 2.97%, respectively as compared to 2021.”
Gray said this shows that law firms can hire diverse lawyers, but they struggle to keep them or develop them into partners. Gray believes this is an issue of inclusion and belonging.
“Part of the problem I see with resolving that issue is that most firms are structured to have at least two classes of employees — attorneys and everyone else and they are treated very differently,” Gray said. “Once you have an organizational structure that, at its base, is creating different classes of employees, that will permeate the organization in other ways and you will start seeing more divisions, more instances of ‘majorities and minorities,’ ‘in people and out people’ and ‘us and them.’”
Gray believes that in order for firms to make progress they should have discussions and examine their organization to ask themselves where they are engaging in exclusionary practices. The full report on diversity can be found on NALP’s website.
