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 © NLP IP Company, Monday, January 31, 2000
Big Pond or Big Fish?
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 When Raymond Hamlin graduated from law school in 1990, he took a decidedly untraditional career path. Unlike many minority students, who are encouraged to take jobs with mainstream firms or the government, Hamlin joined Newark's Ashley & Charles, one of the oldest minority-owned law firms in New Jersey. Hamlin felt it important to go to a firm where the partners were African-Americans. "One of the reasons, frankly, was that I thought I would be judged based on my work as a lawyer and not the color of my skin," he says. Today, he's a partner in Newark's Hunt Hamlin & Ridley, a spinoff of Ashley & Charles founded in 1995. As one of a handful of well-known minority firms in the state, Hunt Hamlin also has had a number of high-profile cases. Last year alone, Hamlin represented former Port Authority employee Janet Bostic-Evans, for whom he won a $1.5 million verdict for racial discrimination, and Terrance Everett, the man wrongly arrested for the murder of police officer Joyce Anne Carnegie. With the number of minority partners at the predominantly white, large firms remaining dismally low, minority-owned firms such as Hamlin's are one possible avenue for minority attorneys to excel and rise to the top. "I came here specifically for the composite of the firm," says Katherine Lee, a partner in Edison, N.J.'s Wong Fleming, where six of the firm's 10 attorneys are minorities. Lee adds that at big firms where there are few Asian associates, let alone partners, she would have had a "distinction for all the wrong reasons." "I never was attracted to a large firm because the growth potential for a minority attorney is not great," adds Julio Morejon, a partner in Union City, N.J.'s Morejon & Punales.
RELATIONSHIPS REQUIRED
"It is difficult, as a minority firm, to get business from the general public," says Hamlin. "We have white clients, but we don't have a ton of white clients." Although Hunt Hamlin represents several municipalities -- including the Jersey City Public Library, East Orange Housing Authority and Irvington Board of Education -- the firm has been able to attract municipal clients only in areas where there are large numbers of minorities. "We've submitted bids, proposals to predominantly white areas, and received no work," he says. Other minority leaders agree that lawyers in minority-owned firms can be at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to forming relationships that will lead them to the most lucrative work, such as insurance defense or corporate-related matters. For this reason, some hold that minority attorneys have a better chance of becoming financially successful by joining large firms but keeping a high profile. "Minority-owned partnerships is old school," offers Donna Chin, an officer at the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association who teaches at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. The "more enlightened" route is to encourage corporate clients to use minority lawyers at the large firms, says Chin, who is of counsel to Nagel Rice Dreifuss & Mazie. This not only gives minority attorneys the chance to develop expertise in representing big business, but also gives them the opportunity to become rainmakers. In New Jersey, very few minority-owned firms represent corporations. "Strategically, in New Jersey in particular, you probably have to try to steer work to minority attorneys in large firms," says David Harris of Roseland, N.J.'s Lowenstein Sandler, who is one of the few African-Americans in the state to be a partner at a top firm. "Other than [Brown & Childress, of East Orange, N.J.], there are not that many that are doing the corporate work." However, Harris adds that when recommending attorneys in other states, he is more inclined to refer clients to minority-owned law firms. For students graduating from law school, minority-owned firms are usually not a viable option, since the firms may not have the resources to take on lawyers who still need to learn how to practice. "Larger firms and medium-sized firms can absorb a new attorney better and put more time into training that attorney," says Linda Wong, a partner at Wong Fleming, who adds that she no longer hires lawyers straight out of school. "Our practice is small enough that if an attorney doesn't learn the practice quickly, we can't afford that attorney." At minority job fairs, law students are heavily recruited by mainstream firms, and many end up taking jobs there, even though the odds against being made partner are overwhelming. "There's always a push for us to go to big firms or government jobs," says Dara Govan, president of the Association of Black Law Students at Rutgers-Newark. But, Govan says, the common wisdom among fellow students about big firms is that "they recruit you, they get you in the door, but they do nothing to try to nurture you." Wong agrees that many minority attorneys become discouraged at large firms because there are so few minority partners fighting for them. Talented attorneys end up leaving because "when it's time to move up, they see they don't have a mentor who's going to help bring them up to partner." Says Harris of Lowenstein Sandler: "I've given up trying to figure out why there aren't more minority partners at the major firms." But one possibility he offers is that firms get caught in a Catch-22 of sorts: Unless a firm already has a minority presence, it is especially difficult to retain minority associates, who feel alienated from the firm's culture. When it comes to money, forgoing big-firm salaries may not be for everyone. Says John Page, president of the Garden State Bar Association -- the professional organization for African-American lawyers: "If someone's paying you a six-figure salary, you might not be able to get that at a minority-owned firm."
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| Wendy Davis is a reporter at the New Jersey Law Journal, an American Lawyer Media affiliate based in Newark. |