New NLJ List: 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers
Winnowing through an avalanche of nominations to determine the 50 minority lawyers who have had the most influence on the profession during the past five years was no easy task, due to the multitude of candidates.
But a National Law Journal team has done so, supplementing the information provided with its own research. Among those recognized in a NLJ article are former Detroit mayor and former American Bar Association President Dennis Archer, 66, who serves as chairman of Dickinson Wright in Detroit; Yale Law school professor and mystery novelist Stephen Carter, 53; and former U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang, 48, who went on to become a partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher after being allegedly pushed out of her federal prosecutor’s job in the Central District of California as part of a Bush administration political purge.
“We freely concede that the results are subjective,” the article states. “Frankly, we could publish a list twice as long and only begin to recognize all of the attorneys making important contributions to the law.”
Although in-house counsel and law professors as well as private-practice lawyers were considered for top-50 billing, judges and nonpracticing lawyers were not.
