Corporate Counsel
The Metropolitan
®
www.metrocorpcounsel.com
Volume 15, No. 3
© 2007 The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Inc.
March 2007
Diversity – Law Firms
Increasing Pipeline Opportunities
In The Legal Profession For Minorities
Carl G. Cooper
KIRKPATRICK & LOCKHART
PRESTON GATES ELLIS LLP
On November 3-5, 2005, the American
Bar Association launched an historic conference entitled “Embracing the Opportunities for Increasing Diversity in the Legal
Profession – Collaborating to Expand the
Pipeline (Let’s Get Real).” Hosted by the
ABA Presidential Advisory Council on
Diversity in the Profession and the Law
School Admission Council, the conference’s aim was to bring together for the
first time all of the stakeholder representatives that would be necessary to collaborate, educate and activate a fresh approach
to increasing and sustaining more minorities in the legal profession. Indeed, every
word in the conference title was fought
over to ensure that nothing and no one was
missing who would be essential to changing the cultural, ethnic and racial makeup
of the legal profession in America.
Conferees agreed that “The legal profession faces no greater challenge in the
Carl G. Cooper is the Chief Diversity Officer of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston
Gates Ellis LLP. He works with the firm’s
Management Committee and other firm
personnel to design and implement an
agenda for K&L Gates that promotes,
achieves and maintains a diverse workplace. This article is based on information
in the Post-Conference Report of
“Embracing the Opportunities for Increasing Diversity in the Legal Profession – Collaborating to Expand the Pipeline (Let’s
Get Real),” Rice University, November 35, 2005.
21st century than the
critical need to diversify its rank.”
The basis of this
conclusion rested
upon, in part, the PreConference Report
which was sent to all
attendees who were
Carl G.
selected to attend this
Cooper
invitation-only gathering because of their acknowledged
expertise and involvement in the subject
matter of the conference. The report,
authored by Diane S. Abraham, a visiting
faculty member at the University of Hawaii
Law School, stated that African-American
children attending state-funded pre-kindergarten programs are almost twice as likely
to be expelled as other groups. The testscore gap between students of color and
white students begins as early as the fourth
grade and continues through the undergraduate and graduate levels. AfricanAmericans graduate from high school at
significantly lower rates than whites and
Asian-Americans.
As for colleges and universities, the
report indicated that minority students, particularly African-Americans, are less likely
to attend college immediately after high
school than their white counterparts, and
for the 2002-03 academic year, AfricanAmerican (non-Hispanic) students earned
only 8.7% of the college degrees compared
to 70% for white (non-Hispanic) students.
A 2005 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) study noted that only 38.5%
of African-American (non-Hispanic) students attending four-year colleges graduated “on-time.” The NCES study also
found that only 32.8% of African-American male students graduated within the
standard four years compared to 40% of
Hispanic men, 54.4% of white men, and
59.6% of Asian men. In states that ban
affirmative action in public schools, such as
California, the admission rates of students
of color in post-secondary educational
institutions have plummeted. In the University of California system, 2003 admissions
numbers for all minority groups dropped
from the previous year. The African-American admissions rate plummeted 15%,
Native- Americans had a 9.2% drop, Hispanics’ admissions fell 3%, and Asians’
declined 2%.
The situation in law schools given these
statistics is predictable. Students of color
have a disproportionately lower law school
application, enrollment, and graduation
rate. In the fall of 2005, white students constituted more than 65% of all applications
to ABA-accredited law schools, compared
to 10.4% of African-Americans, 8.3% of
Asians, and 8.2% of all Hispanic groups.
Between 2000 and 2004, the number of
first-year African-American law students
rose from 3,402 to 3,457, a mere 1.6%
increase in a four-year period. Unfortunately, 2005 brought a 20% drop in that
number to only 3,107 – the smallest class of
African-American 1Ls since 1990-91;
indeed, in 2005, fewer than 400 NativeAmericans enrolled in law school. Moreover, in the past decade, law school
enrollment for students of color has
remained around 19-21% of all law school
applicants, but most minority groups experienced slippage in total law school enrollment during the past decade. American
Indians/Alaska Natives had a 5.3% decline,
that is, 57 fewer students in law school in
2005-06 compared to 1995-96. For that
same period, African-American enrollment
fell 6.7%, Mexican Americans dropped
Please email the author at carl.cooper@klgates.com with questions about this article.
Volume 15, No. 3
© 2007 The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Inc.
3.4%, and Puerto Ricans plunged 24%. By
contrast, Asian/Pacific Islanders’ enrollment skyrocketed 45.8%, with 3,533 more
attending law school in 2005-06 than 10
years earlier. The report noted AfricanAmericans tend to score lower on the Law
School Admission Test (LSAT) than other
groups, which diminishes their chances of
being admitted to law school, and law students of color have a higher attrition rate
than white law students. In 1998, the percentage of students of color remaining in
law school by their second year was 86.8%
compared to 93.6% of white students. In
1998, the percentage of students of color
remaining in law school by their third year
was 84.7% compared to 91.2% of white
students.
As students transition from the academy
to the profession, the report noted, bar
exam passage rates for students of color are
generally lower than whites. A 1998 report
found that African-Americans have the
lowest bar passage rate, at 77.6%. Asians
pass the bar exam at a rate of 91.9%, while
white students have a 96.7% passage rate.
A 2005 report noted that African-Americans represent 12.1% of the U.S. population and only 6.8% of the law degrees
conferred. That same report found Hispanics and Latinos represent 12.5% of the U.S.
population and only 6.9% of the law
degrees awarded. Students of color graduating from law school in 2004 secured only
19.7% of the 30,035 legal jobs available
nationwide.
The cumulative effect – captured in statistics like those above – is a severe constriction of the diversity pipeline into the
profession for students of color. Any one of
these statistics taken alone is a cause for
concern. Taken together, these numbers
indicate the pervasiveness of the problem.
Evett Simmons, Chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the
Legal Profession, noted, “We must reach
out to youth at an early age to get them
fired up about the rule of law, a fair system
of justice, and economic empowerment.
We are on a mission to grow lawyers that
will look like America, contribute to America, and not forget from whence they
came.”
Individuals and organizations are
encouraged to review the recommendations
of the Conference and identify the ones that
align with their own interests and
resources.
Organizations should use these recommendations as a catalyst for creative development of actions that best fit the particular
service provider and targeted recipients.
The recommendations are not meant to be
exhaustive or comprehensive. They do,
however, offer strategic starting points for
taking action that will make a real difference in improving diversity in the pipeline
and in the legal profession.
Recommendations
Embrace and participate in the ABA’s
call to all state, territorial, and local bar
associations to collaborate with elementary
and secondary schools to develop and support programs that will ensure an increase
of minority applications to college and will
increase the readiness of minority applicants for college. Identify existing K-12
programs that encourage youth to consider
a legal career, and work toward increasing
minority student participation in these
existing “general” population pipeline programs and developing comparable programs, when needed, that are adapted
specifically to attract students of color. We
must encourage the legal profession and
the judiciary to support diversity pipeline
initiatives all along the pipeline by creating
visual presentations explaining why diversity pipeline programs matter, for use state
by state; encouraging state bar associations
and supreme courts to offer CLE/pro bono
credits for mentoring; creating a CD-ROM
(with technical assistance provided) for use
by legal organizations that adopt K-12
schools. We need to select cities with significant minority populations as sites for
developing mock trial programs that
include substantive content of interest to
students of color and then identify appropriate entities within those cities to collaborate on developing mentoring programs
for K-12 students, encouraging the respective state bar associations and supreme
courts to offer CLE/pro bono credits for
mentoring, and then developing a tool kit
for law students to mentor K-12 students.
We should strive to develop law-related
and legal career-focused curriculum for K12 students, using content that will interest
students of color, including providing skill
development, enhancing career awareness,
offering educational pathway programming, and encouraging parental involvement whenever possible. We must recruit
lawyers and law firms that practice any
aspect of education law – such as general
counsel for educational institutions and
practitioners that handle education-related
cases – to become involved in diversity
pipeline issues and then connect diversity
pipeline efforts with law-related education
programs. We can then begin to develop
and implement a longitudinal model to
track the progress of students of color who
have participated in pipeline programs
throughout the educational process.
March 2007
The report goes on to state that we
should embrace and participate in the
ABA’s call to all state, territorial, and local
bar associations to collaborate with colleges and universities to develop and support pre-law programs that will increase
minority applications to law school and
increase the readiness of minority applicants for law school. We should identify
existing programs that help college students prepare for a legal career, and work
toward increasing minority student participation in these “general population”
pipeline programs and then develop comparable programs, when needed, that are
adapted specifically to attract students of
color. We should identify and support existing diversity pipeline initiatives that have a
proven track record of attracting minority
students and work with community college
administrators to encourage students of
color to pursue four-year and advanced
degrees. We can assist financially needy
students of color in practical ways by
encouraging law firms and other legal professionals to provide financial assistance to
students of color, educating students of
color about the financial aid resources
available and how to access those
resources, and educating students of color
about managing debt. We should also
develop law-related technology programs
that aid in skill building for use by students
of color and their advisors. We must
encourage colleges and universities to provide courses and programming about law
school preparation and the admission
process, including stressing the importance
of proper course selection in preparing for
the LSAT, identifying existing LSAT preparation courses and providing LSAT preparation courses where none exists, actively
supporting collaboration between law
schools, colleges, and universities in the
preparation of students of color for law
school, and identifying existing pre-law
skill building programs and making students of color aware of these programs. In
order to develop enrichment and academically-based programming, we must provide
programs focused on math, reading comprehension, and analytical reasoning and
writing. We must also provide development, career awareness, and educational
pathway programming.
Finally, the report noted, we need to
embrace and participate in the ABA’s call
to the Law School Admission Council and
all state, territorial, and local bar associations to collaborate with accredited law
schools to combat high rates of minority
attrition and ensure that admission policies
do not result in a disparate impact on
acceptance rates of minority applicants.