When is a story not a story? (This is not a trick question.)
Well, when, for example, it reports on a development so small as to be trivial–but inflates its import and meaning greatly out of proportion.
Or when it is premised on statistical analysis but doesn’t pursue where the data might lead in any analytically sophisticated or helpful way.
Or when the environment at large is changing in such profound and unprecedented ways that one would be craven or naive not to suspect that the “key finding” under discussion might not merely be an innocent and entirely unintended piece of collateral damage.
We now have a trifecta, in The American Lawyer‘s annual Diveristy Scorecard 2010
which counts attorneys of color in the U.S. offices of some 200 big firms. In each of the previous nine years that we’ve compiled the Scorecard, the percentage of minority attorneys at all participating firms increased, rising from less than 10 percent in 2000 to 13.9 percent in 2008. In 2009, for the first time, that proportion dipped, to 13.4 percent.
The drop in law firm diversity may be small, but it’s important.
How significant can this be? If you compare 13.9% to 13.4%, the change is less than a 5% proportionate decrease. Yet according to the very same story, “overall, big firms shed 6% of their attorneys [and] 9% of their minority lawyers.” This kind of statistical “what’s going on here?” cries out for deeper analysis.
Unfortunately, we don’t really get that.
We do, however, learn that there are other reasons for concern:
Diversity advocates call the drop a warning sign that shouldn’t be ignored. “I think [that] when you’re looking at any numbers of a population you’re trying to increase, and you see a decrease, that’s significant,” says Venu Gupta, executive director of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms. “I guess I hoped we wouldn’t be going backward,” echoes Fred Alvarez, chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession and a Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner.
The decrease in minority head count confirms a concern voiced by many in the legal industry: that the massive law firm layoffs of 2008 and 2009 would hit minority lawyers especially hard. “There were fears when the recession began that these folks would be disproportionately impacted, and it appears to be the case,” says Thomas Sager, general counsel of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and a longtime diversity champion. Sager and other observers fear that this year’s falloff could be the start of a new downward trend, given a climate of slower law firm hiring, fewer African American law school students, and so-called stealth layoffs. […]
Consultant Arin Reeves of The Athens Group says minority associates suffer when work dries up: “Your ability to meet hours is reflective of whether or not you’ve been invested in.”
Now, not to gainsay what’s being reported here, or its potential import if the cited trend continues for the next several years. The biggest news (which is in the lead paragraph, as it should be) is that for the first time in the 10 years that TAL has been conducting the Diversity Scorecard, there’s an overall drop in percentage of minority attorneys. When a trend goes on for as long as it’s been measured and then reverses, that is indeed news.
My reservation is less with the headline and more with the rather alarmist tones of concern excerpted above,which give the story its punch and its juice.
The problem is that the deeper you dig, the less there there is there.
How so? In trying to analyze what might be behind the numbers, I found that that last remark (above) from Arin Reeves provided the beginning of a clue. The clue lies in the focus on associates. Here’s another bit of evidence:
For a long time, the way that law firms beefed up their diversity numbers was really to have a lot of diverse associates in the first-and second-year classes,” says Gupta from the Chicago Committee on Minorities. If a firm didn’t hold on to its minority associates–and many didn’t–it was relatively easy, Gupta says, to hire more in the next recruiting season.
But that was in a so-called normal economy. These days, firms can’t quickly replace the minority attorneys they lose through voluntary or involuntary attrition. Reduced recruiting is another factor that is likely contributing to the decline in minority attorneys.
In other words, firms’ diversity scores disproportionately rely on their associate ranks.
So let’s take a look.
Here’s the data:
| Change in Non-Partners | Change in Partners | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Total |
-10%
|
+1%
|
| Black |
-16%
|
not reported
|
| Asian |
-11%
|
+6%
|
| Hispanic |
-13%
|
+3%
|
| White |
not reported
|
not reported
|
As I look at this, I see a much more nuanced–and optimistic–story.
Overall, to state the obvious, serious cuts came in the ranks of associates and non-equity partners. (Caveat: The story doesn’t specify whether “partners” as used by the author means equity or both equity and non-equity, but since industry-wide we’ve seen no meaningful growth in the ranks of non-equities in the past year, I’ll assume it refers to equity only.)
But (second big caveat–given the data we are provided) minorities did better than average in growing their representation among the partnerships. How, pray tell, is this bad news on the diversity front? It’s possible–not that it makes for an alarming story, of course, but it’s possible–to interpret this data as implying that the long hoped-for ascension of minorities into the partnership ranks is actually taking place.
Finally, the missing statistical analysis: The only way to really tell whether the disproportionate layoffs of non-partners among minorities (see table above) has resulted from firms’ using the economic downdraft to try to conceal what in their dark and secretive hearts is prejudice pure and simple–highly implausible, in my book–is to separately break out the demographics of lawyers laid off for economic reasons, which the article says is “a project beyond the scope of this survey.”
More’s the pity.
Because that’s the only way to tell whether (Theory A) something nefarious and troubling is going on here, or whether (Theory B) the macroeconomic environment was disproportionately harsh on associates in general and junior associates in particular–and whether the posited over-representation of minorities in those ranks simply, but innocently, took its toll.
Care to vote?
