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Building a Better Legal Profession

9/30/2009 8:13:10 PM EST

Big Law and Diversity Tall Tales

By Matthew Schwieger

Posted by BBLP

This past winter I had the pleasure of sitting in on a diversity recruitment lunch put on by a national law firm at the Stanford Law School. This firm is among the most elite and largest law firms in the United States, with international offices across the globe. Just like the websites of most big firms, the presenting firm’s website is complete with a diversity page devoted to touting their record on the hiring of women and minorities. A mission statement, quotes from minority associates, and videos praising the firm’s record on diversity send the message that diversity is more of a value than rhetoric. With all of this in hand, you might think that this particular law firm would have an edge in recruiting these law students—really, how hard can it be to sell a purportedly diverse and elite law firm to diverse and elite law students? Nevertheless, the firm screwed it up mightily. To put it simply, the Stanford Law students in attendance called the firm’s bluff and I couldn’t help but think these students had seen it all before.

With free food and an iTunes gift card raffle awaiting attendees, the big name law firm’s five lawyer presentation amounted to little more than an oddly morose but self-appeasing outlook on the firm’s diversity. Among their points of persuasion that the firm cares about diversity was the example, offered by one of the lawyers, of office watching parties of the film “Crash.” But after more fluffy diversity claims came a moment of truth when a Stanford Law student asked the lawyers why the firm’s diversity numbers didn’t match the diversity rhetoric. Armed with the firm’s diversity statistics from Building a Better Legal Profession, the question from the student sparked a redefinition of diversity from the big law attorney crew. Having been called out for their heaping helping of C’s, D’s, and F’s from BBLP a presenting attorney oddly declared that it’s firm culture that proves its competence in diversity, not the damning numbers.

I guess with numbers this bad, the firm had little choice but to hawk its movies, diversity lunches, and affinity groups. But, as one law student pointed out, it is hard to have an “affinity group” if there is only one minority lawyer in the Silicon Valley office. Not coincidentally, that sole minority lawyer from this office was present on the panel and told the assembled group of slack-jawed students that the firm was the “most diverse place” she had ever worked. This set off a wave of student speculation about where she might have worked before—perhaps, beacons of inclusion such as Bob Jones University or Augusta National Golf Club. But if only diversity were this simple, if only feeling diverse was a replacement for being diverse and law students weren’t capable of parsing this kind of dissembling blather.

But perhaps it is unfair to single out this particular employer. After all, when it comes to diversity among the elite firms of the legal profession, just about all of them are in the same shoes. All the firms have the diversity websites and the diversity mission statements, but few have results. While not every woman or minority law student, or even law students generally, may be dying to work at the most elite firms, it is a fact that associate-level attorney demographics for elite law firms don’t come close to matching who is graduating from law schools. This is cause for concern and some diplomatic derision. It takes a few clicks, but U.S. News has diversity data for law schools that demonstrates that the pipeline to elite law firms is as diverse as it has ever been.

Law firm profitability depends on being able to hire scores of the best and brightest law school graduates every year. At the same time, firms are also under pressure from students and clients to increase their diversity as they do this hiring. While the law firm that visited Stanford Law School on a rainy winter day had a sense of diversity that came off as truly bizarre, it’s overshadowed by the pervasive contradiction between the stated value of diversity and evidence in their actual hiring and retention results that suggests that maybe they don’t really care at all. Patronizing presentations aside, at the end of the day we are left with big law’s most transparent diversity indicator—their own numbers.

Updated September 30, 2009 from previous post