With 2018 gay pride month now in the books and 49 years since the seminal Stonewall riots, it’s important to take stock of the (gratefully) changing landscape of diversity in the law—from both a diversity perspective and my own personal perspective on LGBTQ specific diversity.

When I began as a prosecutor in the early 1990s, I worked in an office of more than 500 assistant district attorneys.  The crime rate was bursting through the ceiling in New York when I started practicing, yet the amount of diversity in our ranks was dismally low.  We did not represent our community, and our community did not represent us.  “Below the floor as it were,” and completely not a reflection of our constituents.  Perhaps we had one “out” ADA out of 500+, but it wasn’t me, and surely there wasn’t a single judge.