Our ongoing Hot Topic page rounds up the latest stories about efforts to improve diversity in the legal profession, plus the specific challenges and milestones of that journey.
Thelen ranked near the middle in most of the categories. Khoja said he looked at Thelen in spite of low numbers of minority partners because the firm got good reviews from his fellow Boalt Hall law students on the Asian Law Journal.
Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession started looking at diversity while researching billable-hour requirements at leading law firms in connection with their advocacy for more work-life balance, Bruck said.
“What we find in our reports is that women and minorities are leaving firms much more than men are,” Bruck said. “For women in particular, part of this has to do with the onerous billable-hour expectations that big firms put on their lawyers.”
To that end, the group also ranked firms by their percentage of female associates in comparison to female partners � the higher and closer the percentages, the higher the ranking. However, since they only got as far as putting together that list for New York offices, Bay Area firms such as MoFo, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe ranked highly.
Bruck spent the summer putting the numbers together from the NALP directory with other members of the extracurricular group. Dauber said the students received independent study credit for the project.
Some of the numbers weren’t quite right, said Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin’s Dipanwita Deb Amar, who heads the firm’s diversity committee. For instance, the firm has 32 percent women partners as opposed to the 16 percent listed. Amar said the firm was looking into the discrepancy.
In response, Bruck noted that if a firm claims different numbers, “then they have either changed from Feb. 1, or they initially provided incorrect data to NALP.” His group is willing to update its data upon request.
Numbers aside, Amar said, the rankings do send a message.
“This study as well as other studies allows firms to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s going on in the markets and makes clear to firms that diversity is something that students take seriously,” Amar said. “Over time, law firms do listen to students who do effectively vote with their feet.”
