Law firms have historically struggled with diversity efforts. As more opportunities arise in the legal industry, big name legal companies have largely remained the same. No report shows this better than the recent ALM Annual Diversity Scorecard which showed that law firms have increased minority representation by less than 1% over the past year. The Scorecard is a “ranking that looks at the percentage of minority lawyers as well as the percentage of minority partners at law firms.”
According to the annual scorecard, minority lawyer percentage working at Am Law 200 firms and NLJ 250 firms increased from 15.6% in 2016 to 16.1% in 2017. This represents a 0.5% increase overall.
When separating these numbers into a partner and nonpartner portion, the percentage of minority partners grew 0.5% from 2016 to 2017 (from 8.6% to 9.1%). “The total number of minority nonpartners at law firms inched up to 21.7 percent from 21.2 percent in 2016”, again accounting for 0.5%.
Despite this, Law.com released its ranking for top law firms for diversity with White & Case taking the top spot for the fifth year in a row. The top five have been included in this article, however if you’re looking for more information, make sure to check out the rankings at Law.com
- White & Case
- Fragomen
- Wilson Sonsini
- Fenwick
- Best
