When Tamera Erskine started practicing law 35 years ago, she recalled sitting in a courtroom when the judge assigned her a criminal case.

“The judge said to a black male inmate: ‘I’m going to give you something you’ve always wanted, a white woman,’ and pointed at me while handing me the file,” Erskine, a shareholder at Webster, Henry, Bradwell, Cohan, Speagle & DeShazo in Birmingham, Alabama, responded to a post on LinkedIn.