Courtesy of NAPABA
SAN FRANCISCO — Asian-Americans have been the fastest-growing minority group in the legal profession for the past three decades, but they’ve made only limited progress in reaching the upper echelons of the law, according to a study released Tuesday.
“A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law,” published by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association and Yale Law School, reports there are over 50,000 Asian-American lawyers in the United States today compared to 20,000 in 2000. The study, billed as the first comprehensive look at the career paths of Asian-American law students and lawyers in the United States, found that Asian-Americans account for nearly 5 percent of lawyers and about 7 percent of law school students nationwide—as compared to 6 percent of the entire population.
But, at the peak of the legal profession, the study found that only 3 percent of federal judges and 2 percent of state judges are Asian-American. In 2016, only three of the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys were Asian-Americans. And as of 2014 only four Asian-Americans served as elected district attorneys.
“Asian-Americans have a firm foot in the door of the legal profession; the question now is how wide the door will swing open,” wrote the study’s co-authors, including California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu. “Greater penetration into these public leadership roles is critical if the increasing number of Asian-American attorneys is to translate into increasing influence of Asian-Americans in the legal profession and throughout society.”
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