Summary
Professor Deborah Rhode discusses law firm diversity, or lack thereof, with Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times.
Jimmie L. McMillian’s path to partnership in an Indianapolis law firm might seem unexceptional — except for a few telling details.
He left behind the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up in a family troubled by domestic violence, went to college in Indiana and then earned his law degree in the state. He joined the law firm, Barnes & Thornburg, and six years ago, was promoted to partner, the legal profession’s brass ring.
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The lack of cross-racial relationships that knit lawyers into teams to handle high-pressure client legal tasks is part of what knocks some blacks off the partnership track, said Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University Law School professor and director of its Center on the Legal Profession.
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As part of the research for her newly released book “The Trouble With Lawyers” (Oxford University Press), Professor Rhode surveyed the managing partners of the 100 largest law firms and the general counsels of Fortune 100 companies, most of which said they placed a high priority on diverse employment — but the numbers of nonwhite partners and associates remain stuck at the low levels.
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Even so, Professor Rhode said that some law firm partners complained that an inadequate pool of candidates was responsible for the paucity of minorities, including women, in their workplaces. But Professor Rhode said she believed that unconscious biases too often lead law firm partners to assume that minority lawyers — including women — are less competent than their male counterparts.
And as law firms increasingly require each partner to be a profit center — engaged both in generating and maintaining client business — the highest-level lawyers often rely on colleagues who “look like them,” she said.
She cited 2014 research by Nextions, a Chicago business consulting firm, that found that a group of law firm partners gave a much higher grade to an associate’s written legal memorandum when they thought he was white. But the partners gave the same memo, when they believed it to have been written by a black associate, a lower evaluation and predictions of less potential as a lawyer.
“This underscores that unconscious bias and exclusion from networks of support and client development are still common,” Professor Rhode said.
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