Dive Brief:
- Attorneys of color represented 19.6% of U.S. law firm headcounts last year, an increase of 1.5 percentage points compared to 2020, according to Law360 Pulse’s Diversity Snapshot 2022.
- Minority attorneys made up 11.8% of all partners in 2021, which was about a one percentage point bump from last year’s report.
- Meanwhile, about 38.9% of attorneys and just over 27% of all partners are women, according to Law360 Pulse’s 2022 Glass Ceiling report.
Dive Insight:
While the 1.5 percentage point increase in attorneys of color appears modest, it is the largest rise in the eight years Law360 has been closely tracking diversity in the law.
The rise also comes amid increasing pressure from legal departments wanting to work with outside law firms that prioritize diverse teams.
“Our data-driven look at law firms shows that incremental changes in the representation of attorneys of color do add up over time, but the report also spotlights the profession's lack of diversity, particularly in the upper ranks of a typical law firm,” said Jackie Bell, research and data editor at Law360.
The Diversity Snapshot 2022 found that attorneys of color represented 18% of all partner promotions — equity and nonequity — reported by law firms. Additionally, 10.7% of equity partners are people of color.
Among the firms Law360 surveyed, Asian lawyers are the best-represented minority group, making up 8% of all attorneys. Hispanic attorneys made up about 5% percent of all lawyers and Black lawyers comprised about 4%. All three figures were about a half a percentage point higher than 2020.
The report also found that attrition is worse among diverse attorneys, with 27% of lawyers who left their law firms last year being people of color even though they account for just one-fifth of firm headcounts.
Women in law
Law firms have also made small gains in their work to increase the representation of women in the last five years, according to Law360, though the major statistics for 2021 largely remained the same from year prior.
Just more than 27% of all partners and roughly 24% of equity partners at U.S. law firms are women, according to the Law360 Pulse Glass Ceiling Report. Five years ago, women made-up 20.7% of equity partners and 35.6% of all attorneys.
Bell said that while women making up about 39% of the attorney population and almost one-quarter of equity partners are “high-water marks for the profession, they also underscore that many firms are still far from achieving gender parity at all levels.”
Additionally, the Glass Ceiling Report highlights that the make-up of executive or management committees at U.S. law firms are male-dominated, with women making up roughly one-third of those panels. Law360 has been surveying law firms in one form or another on their representation of women for close to a decade.
“Many law firms continue to make a push for gender parity, launching initiatives and working to provide new support structures for women to build strong careers,” the 2022 report said. “But whether the renewed focus and those renewed efforts will finally push firms to make good on longstanding commitments, adapt their cultures, and deliver measurable change, remains to be seen.”
Women of color are struggling the most to make inroads at law firms. While they comprise 20% of first-year law students, women of color represent just 10% of attorneys and 5% of all partners at the firms Law360 surveyed.
Black women and Hispanic make up less than 1% of equity partners at firms, with Asian women comprising 1.7%.
“For women of color, there are additional challenges, including being consistently overlooked for plum assignments and lacking important mentorship opportunities,” the report said.
