Minority partners at more than three dozen Am Law 100 firms disproportionately occupy the nonequity tier, according to an analysis by The American Lawyer.

Firms that show a sizeable disparity between the percentage of minority and white equity partners in their ranks say the gap is a byproduct of their recent efforts to build a diverse pipeline—that in time, many of those minority nonequity partners will gain equity status. But diversity advocates say the strikingly higher percentage of minorities in the nonequity tier casts doubt on the progress Big Law has made in bringing minority attorneys into firm leadership.