Workforce Language Services

A Diversity Spectrum article finds that the issue isn’t in recruiting lawyers from diverse backgrounds, it’s getting them to stay.  And with the Census Bureau’s projection that 47% of all Americans will be Hispanic, black, or Asian, the law profession is feeling the pressure to diversify its practitioners alongside many other industries.

The 2008 Diversity Counsel Program keynote speaker, Juan Williams, gave 140 lawyers, judges, and law students a glimpse into the future of the profession and ideas about how to move minorities to the forefront:

“Immigrant families have a higher number of children of any group in the country, and in some of the bigger cities those young people represent 50 percent of the population,” he said. “This will have a tremendous effect on the future of the workforce. We are in the midst of a tremendous transition.

“It is time to mentor women and minorities, time to let them take on serious challenging cases,” said Williams. “It is time to stop giving the challenging cases to the associates that look like the managing partners. Law firms must be able to walk the walk to satisfy their increasingly diverse client base, especially their corporate client bases, who want to work with law firms that reflect the face of America.”

He cites that women still only make up 3 percent of the total of managing partners and 1 percent of the total of equity partners.  No statistics were given for the racial or ethnic make-up of today’s lawyers, judges, and law students.