I’m not sure whether I should feel slightly uplifted or dejected by the new study on diversity by the New York City Bar Association. Based on responses from 74 firms that signed the bar’s statement of diversity principles, the study spotlights a few pockets of progress, threaded against a familiar story of stagnation. First, the one bit of unalloyed good news that popped out of the study: New York’s gay lawyers are on a roll. While women and minorities are seeing ups and downs in their numbers, it’s all upwards for gay lawyers. The report says:
“Gay attorneys continued their gradual ongoing trend of increased representation through time. Openly gay attorneys represented 3.6 percent of all attorneys across signatory firms in 2011, rising from 3.1 percent in 2010 and from 1.6 percent in 2004, the first year in which the NYC bar began tracking diversity data. By level, openly gay associates at 4.1 percent outpaced openly gay partners (2.5 percent).”
