Researching racism

An insight into the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in the Profession's latest report - From Visible Invisibility to Visibly Successful: Success Strategies for Law Firms and Women of Color in Law Firms. Pamela J. Roberts reports.

Most private firm business models continue to adhere to the ‘pay your dues and climb the ladder’ tradition. Regardless of how accomplished a woman may be, she cannot climb – much less reach the top of – the leadership ladder unless she spends a certain number of years in her work environment. Nowhere is this more painfully obvious than with women of colour in law firms.
Women of colour experience a ‘double whammy’ of gender and race, unlike white women or even men of colour who share at least one of these characteristics (gender or race) with those in the upper strata of management. Women of colour may face exclusion from informal networks, inadequate institutional support, and challenges to their authority and credibility. They often feel isolated and alienated, sometimes even from other women. Not surprisingly, these and other barriers have impacted the retention and advancement of women of colour, particularly into the partnership ranks of major law firms within the US.
The legal profession has changed and today almost half of the associates in private law firms are now women and 15 per cent are lawyers of colour, but key data provides a staggering snapshot of the segment of the profession which is not advancing. According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), minorities hold only 5.4 per cent of law firm partner positions among the ranks of major US law firms. The numbers are even more disturbing for minority women, who hold only 1.5 per cent of partner positions1. These statistics alone are troubling and reveal that law firms have a long road to travel before achieving equality within the workplace.
Unfortunately, this data only tells part of a complex story. In the late 1990s, the NALP found that more than 75 per cent of minority female associates had left their jobs in private law firms within five years of being hired, and after eight years the percentage of those leaving rose to 86 per cent. By 2005, 81 per cent of minority female associates had left their law firms within five years of being hired.

Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms
Until 2004, previous research had focused specifically either on women or on people of colour in the legal profession. Recognising the need for a comprehensive analysis of the unique concerns and experiences of Hispanic, African-American, Native American, and Asian-American women in the legal profession, the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession undertook a comprehensive research study of the unique experiences and concerns of women of colour in private law firms that included a national survey and focus groups. This report on the Commission’s Women of Color Research Initiative goes beyond the NALP data to further our understanding of the professional lives of women of colour and their experiences in law firms.
The Commission on Women in the Profession engaged the National Opinion Research Center, a social science research organisation at the University of Chicago, to design and implement the survey and focus-group methodology used in this study. The national survey included men and women of colour who were African-American, Native-American, Hispanic/Latina, Asian, or of mixed background. The responses of women of colour were compared to those of white men, white women, and men of colour to determine how their careers differed from those of their peers and the magnitude of those differences. The focus groups, comprised solely of women of colour, provided a more detailed picture of the career experiences of women lawyers of colour and an opportunity to understand from their perspective how and why their career experiences differed from their counterparts.
The study explores the experiences of women of colour who had worked in a law firm of at least 25 lawyers, and it attempts to answers such critical questions as: What attracts women of colour to the legal profession? Do their work experiences surpass or fall short of expectations? How do legal employers hinder or increase job satisfaction? Why do women lawyers of colour change practice areas and organisations, or leave the profession at an alarming rate?2
In late 2006, the Commission on Women in the Profession released its groundbreaking report Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms as part of its Women of Color Research Initiative. Focusing on women lawyers of colour in large law firm practices, the data showed that women lawyers of colour experience a dramatically different working environment to their similarly situated white male, white female and male lawyers of colour counterparts including: demeaning comments or harassment; a lack of networking opportunities; denial of assignments; a lack of access to billable hours; limited client-development opportunities; unfair performance evaluations; lower compensation; and higher rate of job attrition.
Notably, the career experiences of women of colour in this study differed most significantly from those of their peers and from white male counterparts in particular.
For example, nearly half the women of colour experienced demeaning comments or harassment, but only three per cent of white men. Below are examples of some of the comments women of colour have experienced:

“I had people make comments like, ‘Oh, you’re Indian. Where’s your tomahawk? Are you going to scalp me?’ Or, ‘Can I call you Pocahontas?’ . . . When I was called ‘chief’ and brought it to people’s attention I was told, ‘Oh, you’re spoiling [our work] environment here.’ So I had to leave.” [Native American woman];
“I’ve had opposing parties, opposing counsel, treat me like a little girl and part of that is the Asian thing because they see a little Asian doll . . . it’s really annoying and I’m tired of it.” [Asian lawyer];
“I had a managing partner call me into his office when I was a fourth year [associate]. He introduced me to the client, who was Korean, and he tells him that I’m Korean too. He says, ‘She eats kim chee just like you.’ He said to me, ‘Talk to him.’ I looked at the client and said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure you speak English better than I speak Korean.’ The client’s face was so red.” [Another Asian lawyer]

Nearly two-thirds of the women of colour, but only four per cent of white men, were excluded from informal and formal networking opportunities, marginalised and made peripheral to professional networks within the firm. Experiences include:

“I am often excluded from opportunities for informal mentoring and information sharing – the lunches, happy hours and golf outings between male and Caucasian attorneys. These informal settings allow majority attorneys to get valuable insight, ‘dirt’, and work opportunities. This information leads to better work, more client contact, and so on. Being left out puts me at a disadvantage compared to majority attorneys.” [Woman lawyer of colour];
“I have nothing in common with my boss. I can’t go to lunch with him. If we go out for a drink he’ll cross his arms and we’ll make small talk, but it’s never about the game or about family life. It’s just, ‘Oh, did you get that account?’” [Woman lawyer of colour];
“There’s a guy in the litigation department who plays golf almost every weekend with a partner who has a huge corner office next to me in a completely different department. They just hit it off playing golf. Is that going to help him? Maybe not. Have I ever been asked to play golf? Nope. I probably won’t be. Whether or not he has a mentor, he came in and was put on a team that’s going to go to trial and he’ll get great experiences. I’m certainly reaching out to everybody I know to get as much [quality experience as I can]. . . . I don’t know of any white men who fell through the cracks. I think they have work opportunities if they want them. It’s just harder when you’re not picked right out of the gate.” [Woman lawyer of colour].

Forty-three percent of women of colour, but only three per cent of white men, had limited access to client development opportunities. Women of colour stated that they met with clients only when their race or gender would be advantageous to the firm; they frequently were not given a substantive role in those meetings. Experiences include:

“I felt like an exotic animal. I was always asked to attend functions and award ceremonies, speak to law students of colour, and pose for advertising publications. However, I never had contact with partners in power other than at these events. Law firms would do well to examine whether their associates of colour are given real opportunities to interact with the power structure of the firm.” [Woman lawyer of colour];
“A white male in my firm worked on a transaction from the beginning to just before the closing. He had to leave to get married and would be gone for two to three weeks on his honeymoon. So I stepped in and took over the closing. I worked with the client for one week. At the end of the deal the client said ‘Wow, you did a great job! We can forget about what’s-his-name; I want you to be on our deals going forward.’ They had a deal in the pipeline and he mentioned it to the partner who was working on the deal. The client said, ‘I want [her] to work on this deal.’ Then the partner said, ‘Okay, we’ll talk about that.’ Right away I could hear some reservation. On our way back to the airport the partner said, ‘Well, I understand that [the client] said he wanted you to work on his next transaction. We’ll definitely find a way to get you involved, to a certain extent.’ I never did anything on the next deal, even though the client wanted me.” [Woman lawyer of colour];
“We were at the printer’s. They had a layout of food, all kinds of cuts of chicken, and the client had been flirting with me. He said, ‘I like my meat dark’. I was so naïve, I said, ‘Oh, me too!’ I didn’t get it at all. So he’s looking at me and says, ‘You know, I have yellow fever’. At that point I realized he was being completely inappropriate and a total jackass. I went up to my partner and told him that the guy had made a racial comment and was hitting on me. His response? ‘Well, don’t you find him attractive?’ I went to the only female partner and her response was, ‘Just let it lie. Don’t make waves, just move on.’” [Woman lawyer of colour]

Nearly one-third of women of colour, but less than one per cent of white men, felt they received unfair performance evaluations. Sometimes their accomplishments were ignored by the firm or were not as highly rewarded as those of their peers, sometimes their mistakes were exaggerated. One women lawyer of colour said: “While working as an associate in a majority-owned firm, I got a very high-profile case dismissed with prejudice by the plaintiff (we represented the defendant), and I received no recognition for my accomplishment. When a white female associate won an oral argument against a pro se plaintiff, the firm announced the win to everyone by e-mail and took everyone out for drinks after work to celebrate. Her case was worth about $5,000 and my case was valued at about $1.5m.”
The report also revealed that the careers of white women lawyers and men lawyers of colour were neither as disadvantaged as those of women lawyers of colour nor as privileged as those of white men.

Recommendations
In addition to the many findings reported in Visible Invisibility, the report proposes a number of recommendations for law firms to consider in their individual efforts to address the needs of women of colour lawyers and to ensure their future success. Recommendations include:

Address the success of women of colour as a firm issue not a women of colour’s issue;
Integrate women of colour into existing measurement efforts;
Integrate women of colour into the firm’s professional fabric;
Integrate women of colour into the firm’s social fabric;
Increase awareness of women of colour’s issues through dialogue;
Support women of colour’s efforts to build internal and external support systems;
Stay compliant with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and hold people accountable for non-compliance.

However, the report is not an end unto itself. It is a tool for law firm managing partners to implement change so that they retain women of colour and enable these women to join the ranks of leadership.

From Visible Invisibility to Visibly Successful
In August 2008, the Commission on Women in the Profession released From Visible Invisibility to Visibly Successful: Success Strategies for Law Firms and Women of Color in Law Firms which is the supplement publication to Visible Invisibility. This report is the result of information, insights and advice gathered from women of colour partners in national law firms and an examination of law firm practices that contributed to their success.
Twenty-eight women of colour who had reached partnership ranks in their law firms despite facing an array of barriers were interviewed. Law firms with minority women partners shared some of their successful practices. The results of this supplemental research were the identification of two categories of strategies that can and should occur simultaneously in order for law firms to achieve sustained success with women of colour lawyers.
The Visibly Successful report details nine strategies for law firms and eight strategies for women of colour in law firms, which taken together will result in the empowerment of individual women of colour to build the support, skills, resources and power to succeed, in spite of the barriers that currently exist in law firms.
The law firm strategies require institutional change and include the following:

Grow outreach to women of colour through the firm’s recruiting efforts;
Develop measurement tools with which progress can be analysed and measured;
Develop channels throughout the firm for inclusive formal and informal networking;
Develop measures for tracking and analysing the flow of work, and hold leaders of practice groups accountable for ensuring that work is distributed in an equitable and unbiased way;
Create means for younger lawyers to monitor their own success;
Build systems of self-advocacy into the lawyer evaluation processes, and ensure that evaluations are done in an open, effective, and unbiased manner;
Integrate business development skills-building into an lawyer’s development in the firm;
Develop a succession-planning strategy for the firm that integrates the inclusion of senior associates and junior partners; and,
Create an effective Diversity Committee or similar leadership structure.

As discussed in more detail in Visibly Successful, each of these strategies needs to be customised to the individual law firm.
The eight strategies for women of colour in law firms are a result of confidential interviews. The overwhelming message from these discussions is to believe in yourself and continue steps to develop networks, find a mentor (or two or more) and most of all, take care of yourself. One woman might have best summed it up when she said “if you don’t get help, you won’t succeed.”3
As the Visibly Successful report concludes, “in order to transform the careers of women of colour in law firms from visibly invisible to visibly successful, law firms have to first understand the specific issues facing women of colour, and then address these issues in partnership with the women of colour in their workforce”. There is no one solution for eradicating barriers within law firms, nor is there one formula for establishing a truly open and diverse profession, but the strategies outlined in these reports are a meaningful starting point.

Pamela J. Roberts is a partner at US law firm Nelson Mullins and former chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. She can be contacted at pamela.roberts@nelsonmullins.com

References

Analysis done by NALP from demographic information collected for its 2007-2008 NALP Directory of Legal Employers;
See www.abanet.org/women, for full details of this research study, including the executive summary, information on the full report and recommendations, and subsequent research;
See Dear Sisters, Dear Daughters: Words of Wisdom from Multicultural Women Attorneys Who’ve Been There and Done That (2000) and Dear Sisters, Dear Daughters: Strategies for Success from Multicultural Women (2008) both published jointly by the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession and Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession. See also www.ababooks.org.