Only 2% of BigLaw Partners are Minority Women, Study Says
Minorities continue to be underrepresented in the partnership ranks of big law firms, with minority women faring the worst, according to a study by the National Association for Law Placement.
Only 1.88 percent of partners at major law firms are minority women and only 4.21 percent are minority men, according to a NALP press release summarizing new 2008 data.
In all, minorities account for 6.09 percent of partners and women account for 18.74 percent, percentages that represent small gains since 1993 when NALP first collected the data. That year, minorities accounted for 2.55 percent of partners, and women accounted for 12.27 percent of partners.
The figures show “the overlap of race and gender is significant, and presents unique hurdles for minority women in the industry,” NALP executive director James Leipold said in the press release. “What these numbers confirm is what many other studies have shown, and that is that women and minorities leave their law firm jobs at a higher rate than their male and nonminority colleagues.”
A greater percentage of minorities and women are associates and summer associates, NALP’s study found. In 2008, 45.42 percent of summer associates were women, 24.04 percent were minorities and 12.99 percent were minority women. In the associate ranks, 45.34 percent are women, 19.11 percent are minorities and 10.74 percent are minority women.
A 2006 study by the ABA Commission on Women, “Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms,” concluded that women of color are leaving the profession in droves because they are the victims of an uninterrupted cycle of institutional discrimination. Many women responding to the ABA survey said they felt they were denied the same opportunities to succeed as their male and nonminority counterparts, the ABA Journal reported in an August 2006 story on the report.
Hat tip to the National Law Journal.
