The legal profession has steered the nation’s fight for diversity and gender equality. Yet, while structuring, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct to society at large, our profession has hypocritically failed to set a shining example.
The American Bar Association avows that it “maintains a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession,” stating one of its four key priorities is, “eliminating bias and enhancing diversity, … in the legal profession and the justice system” by “[p]romot[ing] full and equal participation in the association, our profession, and the justice system by all persons[.]” The ABA further maintains it, “ provide[s] leadership in legal ethics and professional responsibility through the adoption of professional standards that serve as models of the regulatory law governing the legal profession,” i.e. the Model Rules.
