IN STUDENTS’ EYES, LOOK-ALIKE LAWYERS DON’T MAKE THE GRADE
I’ve watched Boston Legal. There are men and women, blacks and whites, even one fellow suffering with Asperger’s syndrome practicing in that office. They seem to make big bucks. According to a bunch of Stanford law students handing out “diversity report cards” to the big law firms, many of the biggest firms have atrocious, appalling records on diversity.
“A bunch of law students at Stanford have started assigning letter grades to their prospective employers, which pretty much tells you who holds the power in the market for new associates. It’s not easy to persuade new lawyers from the top schools to accept starting salaries of only $160,000.”
“The students are handing out “diversity report cards” to the big law firms, ranking them by how many female, minority and gay lawyers they have.”
““Many of the firms have atrocious, appalling records on diversity,” said Michele Landis Dauber, a law professor at Stanford and the adviser for the project, called Building a Better Legal Profession. The rankings are at www.betterlegalprofession.org.”
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Michele Dauber Says:October 29th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
In fact, your readers may be interested to learn from our rankings at betterlegalprofession.org that Boston has the worst record on racial diversity of any market in the country. 30% of firms have less than 2% black ASSOCIATES — this is entry level hiring. That is pitiful. 20% of firms have ZERO black associates. That is just wrong. 40% of firms have ZERO openly gay partners. 30% of firms have ZERO openly gay associates. The partnership figure in particular makes Boston again an outlier among cities and not in a good way. On gender, Boston’s Foley and Lardner has the lowest percentage of female partners for any firm anywhere in the six ranked areas (norcal, socal, DC, Boston, Chicago, Manhattan). We should probably give them some sort of Golden Turkey award for that one.
What’s happening in Boston? It’s odd, because these firms are smaller >50 lawyers than those in NYC (>100) (though the same size as those in SF). Smaller firms have traditionally been thought of as more, rather than less, hospitable to minority lawyers and that seems to be true in SF. So if you have theories about what’s in the law firm water coolers up there, please drop us a line.
Michele Landis Dauber
Professor of Law
Stanford University
Michele Dauber Says:October 29th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Whoops, sorry for the broken link, here’s one that works:
betterlegalprofession.org