Philadelphia law firms say they are working hard to recruit and retain more minority lawyers. But those efforts have not produced many tangible improvements, according to statisticsreleased in The Minority Law JournalDiversity Scorecard, the second annual survey of minority hiring at the nation’s largest 250 law firms.
While national numbers — taken at the end of 2001 — show that the percentage of minority lawyers working at large firms has cracked double digits (10.1 percent, up from 9.7 percent in 2000) for the first time, the 17 local firms on the list averaged only 6.1 percent.
