Increasing diversity in the legal profession has been an initiative of the American Bar Association for decades, including when it surveyed managers of large law firms nationwide in 1986 and concluded that “[it] remains largely segregated.” The Bar Association of San Francisco took this initiative several steps further, one by establishing a Committee for Minority Employment to establish specific hiring goals and timetables of 25 percent for associates and 10 percent for partners locally by Dec. 31, 2000, where nearly 100 legal employers agreed. Although progress was made in the associate ranks, few minority lawyers advanced to partnership. Recently, BASF took another step to get to the “bottom line” causes behind this phenomenon by publishing the Bottom Line Partnership Task Force Report. This article focuses on findings pertaining to African-Americans.
Methodology of the Report
While many diversity studies involve only numbers and tracking statistics, the BLPTFR relies heavily on one-on-one interviews with partners, of counsel, managing partners and in-house counsel of color from local small, midsize, large law firms and companies. BASF’s goals were:
