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OBABL Links & Resources
Social Engineer
Apr
1
Ming Zhu, a recent Harvard Law grad and current fellow with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, just published a study on the tenure-track of minority law professors. She concludes in An Empirical Study of Race and Law School Hiring that while minorities are more likely to be hired, they are also more likely to be locked out of top tier posts.
From NLJ:
Zhu sought to figure out whether race plays a role in law school hiring. Law schools have been under pressure since the 1980s to boost the number of minority faculty members, which often is seen as a key to increasing minority student enrollment. In turn, higher minority enrollment is a cornerstone of increasing diversity throughout the legal profession.
Zhu analyzed data on 889 candidates:
Of the 889 candidates, 191 — just more than 21% — were hired by the following academic year, according to Zhu’s study. Minorities made up nearly 20% of those who were hired, but Asians, blacks and Latinos were all more likely than whites to be hired. Asians topped the list of successful hires, with nearly 43% of candidates landing a position. About 29% of Latino candidates got jobs, while slightly more than 24% of black candidates were hired. By comparison, about 21% of white applicants landed positions.
Zhu concludes:
“Taken alone, these results seem like a good sound-byte for the argument that minorities are being preferred in faculty hiring,” the report says. It notes, however, that without more information on qualifications, it’s impossible to know if the hiring decisions were a result of affirmative action or a stronger minority applicant pool.
The picture gets a bit murkier when it comes to where minority applicants were offered jobs. “Examining the placement of the hired candidates, it is immediately clear that minorities do considerably worse than non-minorities in terms of placement,” the study reads.
Mar
12
Roxanne E. Covington Elected Judge of the Court of Common Pleas
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Roxanne Covington was recently sworn in as a judge in Philadelphia:
Roxanne E. Covington is making great strides in Philadelphia, Pa. as a newly elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas. She took the oath of office during a swearing-in ceremony in January. In her new capacity, Covington will serve as a judge in the Criminal Courts Division.
During the November 2009 election, Covington led a field of more than 20 candidates for a seat on the Court of Common Pleas. Covington is the only African American and African American female elected to the bench in Philadelphia during the 2009 election. She is also the youngest judge serving in the Philadelphia court system.
Full story here:
Mar
5
The American Lawyer released its Diversity Scorecard 2010 issue this week. Reading it, we were reminded of that quote often attributed to Malcolm X: When White America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia.
Full report here: Before reading the highlights provided below, you might want to take a Xanax.
One Step Back: For the first time in years, the population of minority lawyers at big law firms is shrinking.
The drop in law firm diversity may be small, but it’s important. Overall, big firms shed 6 percent of their attorneys between 2008 and 2009–and, amid the bloodletting, lost 9 percent of their minority lawyers. (Here and elsewhere in this story, we’ve calculated such percentages only for the 191 firms that provided numbers in both years, in order to have a consistent basis for comparison.) Diversity advocates call the drop a warning sign that shouldn’t be ignored. “I think [that] when you’re looking at any numbers of a population you’re trying to increase, and you see a decrease, that’s significant,” says Venu Gupta, executive director of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms. “I guess I hoped we wouldn’t be going backward,” echoes Fred Alvarez, chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession and a Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner.
In Retreat: The legal industry’s wave of recession-induced layoffs appears to have hit African American associates particularly hard.
The legal industry’s wave of recession-induced layoffs appears to have hit African American associates particularly hard. At the 191 firms that took part in our survey this year and last, the absolute number of African American associates fell from 2,826 to 2,362. In 2008, African Americans made up 4.7 percent of the broader nonpartner pool; in 2009, they were down to 4.4 percent–a 16 percent decline that did not surprise some.
But wait, there is some good news after the jump… Read more
Mar
5
$30 Million pledged to Minority- and Women-Owned Firms:
Prudential and about a dozen other companies, including DuPont and Microsoft, pledged Thursday to spend $30 million in 2010 on minority- and women-owned law firms.
In-house lawyers at DuPont and Prudential hatched the idea and recruited in-house lawyers at other companies to build a larger coalition, Blount tells us. Like many large companies with big legal budgets, Prudential has for several years included diversity among the criteria by which it divides work among its huge outside law firms. With this commitment, Prudential and its allies will direct more money toward smaller minority- and women-owned shops, she says. “There are issues in our profession in terms of bringing in people from diverse backgrounds and, frankly, having women and people from diverse backgrounds experience success in the long haul,” she says.
Mar
4
Minorities Losing Ground in BigLaw
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This seems to be a last hired, first fired scenario:
Deferred start dates for first-year associates at many firms may help explain what became of some of the missing minority attorneys. Because our survey asked for data as of Sept. 30, 2009, deferred first-years were not included in the firms’ head count. (Milbank, for instance, deferred its starting class, which included 33 minority associates, from fall 2009 to January 2010.) That’s important because entering classes tend to be more diverse than the firms they join. Once those associates start work — and some already have — their presence should increase their firms’ diversity statistics.
This optimistic scenario points to an inconvenient truth about large law firm diversity. “For a long time, the way that law firms beefed up their diversity numbers was really to have a lot of diverse associates in the first-and second-year classes,” says Gupta from the Chicago Committee on Minorities. If a firm didn’t hold on to its minority associates — and many didn’t — it was relatively easy, Gupta says, to hire more in the next recruiting season.
There is also the issue of the “stealth” layoff:
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 addition to slower recruiting, Reeves says, “we also saw a lot of minorities quietly being ‘evaluated out’ in the last quarter.”
Full story at Law.com.
Mar
3
AG Holder Gives Annual Race Speech
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Due to “Snowmageddon” this year Black History Month came in March at the Justice Department. Mr. Holder gave a shout out to the Spingarn Senior High School JROTC Color Guard and Howard University Gospel Choir (who no doubt rocked it) before ruminating on the distance this country has let to travel on the issue of race.
This year’s speech didn’t offer the kind of “nation of coward” catch phrases OBABL is so very fond of; nevertheless, Mr. Holder’s message resonated.
DOJ:
For well over two centuries now, we, as a people, have been striving to build a more perfect union - an America where the words of our Constitution can, finally, reach the full measure of their intent. The work of the Justice Department is, and always has been, critical to this pursuit. As a law student and as a young prosecutor in our Public Integrity Section, I dreamed of contributing to this Department. Today, as Attorney General, I have the honor and responsibility of leading it. I also have the privilege of serving with colleagues who share my commitment to this work. Like you, I have great faith in our justice system. In fact, I’d argue that it’s among the most praiseworthy aspects of our national character. But I also realize this hasn’t always been the case.
Despite the great progress we’ve seen in my lifetime, it wasn’t so long ago that African Americans were prevented from owning property, attaining home or business loans, and joining unions. The legal framework we celebrate today - the same system that abolished slavery, encouraged women’s suffrage and ended segregation - once served as a barrier for black families struggling to build wealth and for black children who sought an adequate education.
There was a time when this very Department undermined the rights and privileges it was established to preserve. There was a time when it was accepted, almost universally across our country, that the American principles of justice, liberty and equality did not have to be applied equally to blacks and whites, or to women and men. For much of the last century, our justice system did not do enough to help our nation fulfill its promise of equal opportunity. And, as a result, the doors of economic prosperity remained closed to too many Americans on the basis of their race.
Mar
2
U.S. News & World Report is catching it from all sides in the legal community. They are being slammed for trying to rank law firms and accused of contributing to the decrease in minority law students. At its midyear meeting, the ABA passed a resolution to “study” these so called “rankings.”
This recent study in the Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice will not help them.
Deans and admissions officers told the researchers that the pressure to maintain or improve their U.S. News rankings can mean fewer slots for diverse students, who tend to score lower on the LSAT and have lower grade point averages. “Selectivity” — LSAT scores, undergraduate grades and schools’ degree of exclusivity in accepting applicants — accounts for one quarter of each school’s ranking.
Law firms have jumped on the bandwagon and are blaming the study for their decreasing diversity numbers as well:
The apparent negative relationship between the U.S. News rankings and diversity is bad news for major law firms, which face their own struggles with hiring and retaining minority attorneys. The latest Diversity Scorecard by NLJ affiliate The American Lawyer showed that the percentage of minority attorneys at large U.S. firms dropped slightly during the past year to 13.4%. Law firm leaders routinely cite the relatively small number of minority law school graduates as a hurdle to improving their own diversity.
Reporting from The National Law Journal.
Feb
9
Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. –From ‘The New Jim Crow’.
This from the cover of former Stanford Law School Associate Professor, Michelle Alexander’s new book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. To it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination–employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service–are suddenly legal. As a criminal you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America. we have merely redesigned it.
RestoreFairness has a more in depth review of the book. The organization is working to restore due process and fairness to our immigration system.
Oct
26
Law Firm Recruiter, Ron Jordan Offers OBABL Readers Career Advice
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OBABL has heard from many attorneys and law students seeking career advice, so we’ve decided to partner with Ron Jordan, the founding Principal of Carter-White & Shaw. With more than thirteen years of experience in attorney placement and law firm mergers and acquisitions, Ron has successfully placed many law firm partners and facilitated mergers with major law firms.
Whether you’re just beginning your legal career, looking to transition to government, or reposition yourself after a firm layoff, Ron is hoping to help you sort through this legal career maze.
Post general career questions in the comments section or feel free to send your resume and query directly to Ron at rjordan@diverseattorney.org.
From the MCCA article Debunking the Mystique of Top 20 Law Schools
“GPAs don’t practice law. People practice law,” notes Ron Jordan, founding principal of Carter-White & Shaw. “Their various experiences, along with their theoretical background, will determine what type of lawyer they will become. Going to Harvard is not going to guarantee that you’re going to be successful.”
From Law.com article Agents of Change
Ron Jordan, senior principal director at Carter-White & Shaw, says during a recent day he received calls from a San Francisco firm asking for two attorneys, a firm in Minnesota that needs three attorneys, as well as a New Jersey firm on the lookout for three.
“One year ago, I would have had to solicit those calls,” said Jordan, who says he used to cold call law firms to generate business.
Oct
20
BigLaw Not Big On Diversity?
Filed Under Social Engineer, The Profession • Leave a Comment
The National Law Journal has a lengthy story on the lack of diversity in the legal profession. It seems we lag behind accountants, dentists, and even doctors. While there are several initiatives and institutions–Call to Action, Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the ABA’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Legal Profession, and the Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession–committed to increasing the number of minorities in law firms, so far meaningful results have been hard to come by.
From NLJ:
Five years ago this month, Roderick Palmore wrote “A Call to Action” — a pledge signed by the general counsel of some of the country’s largest corporations vowing to make diversity a major consideration in their selection of outside counsel.
Palmore, now the general counsel of General Mills Inc., wanted companies to put more business pressure on law firms to improve the diversity of their attorney ranks, where racial minorities long have been woefully underrepresented.
Diversity efforts across the profession mushroomed after the Call to Action was issued. Nearly every major law firm has created a diversity committee tasked with boosting minority and female representation. More scholarships for minority law students were established, affinity groups were formed and more so-called pipeline programs popped up to encourage minority students to pursue the law. Nary a week passed, it seemed, when a firm wasn’t unveiling a fresh diversity initiative or trumpeting an award received for its efforts.
Still, real progress in diversifying the profession has been painfully slow. Since 2004, the percentage of minority attorneys at U.S. law firms has crept up from 10 percent to just 12.6 percent in 2009, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) is hoping to change that:
The (LCLD), led by Palmore and Hunton & Williams managing partner Wally Martinez, brings together law firm managing partners and general counsel from major companies to hold legal leaders accountable for their minority numbers. The previous strategy, in which corporations and law firms tackled their diversity problems separately, didn’t yield the desired results, Palmore said.
“[Diversity programs] have been going on for a long time, and the results speak for themselves,” Palmore said. “They’ve been marginally successful, at best. That indicates a new approach is warranted.”
