*According to data from the 2022 Profile of the Legal Profession by the ABA
When WISLR was just raw ideas scratched into a notebook, back in 2019, a piece of data from the American Bar Association (ABA) was written down and underlined: 4% of U.S. attorneys are black. That seemed shockingly low and chilling if it also meant swaths of the country had virtually no diverse options when they needed legal representation. While I was getting swept away by the strong female protagonists of Shonda Rhimes with the rest of you, people in need of real legal help were searching for their Annalise Keating and couldn't find her.
That data point only took up a small amount of space on the page, but it kept getting bigger in our head. Every year since, a diversity report is published by the ABA and every year the statistics stay the same. Not just for Black lawyers, for Native American lawyers too. 😤
Data from the 2022 ABA Diversity Report showing lawyers by Race and Ethnicity
We Should Have Three Times as Many Black Lawyers, So Why Don't We?
The 2020 Census found that 12% of the U.S. population identifies as Black, and if we desire the people who embody our legal profession to be a composite of the clients they represent (which we do), then we deserve to see 12% of all practicing attorneys also identify as Black.
The reasons we haven't seen Black lawyers flourish over the last decade is still unknown. We need data for Black communities that investigates:
Law school recruitment rates
Percent completion of law school
Average debt carried after law school
Percent of job offers received after graduation
Percent passing the bar
Average consecutive years practicing law
Rate of change from lawyer to judge
Average annual rate of attrition and non-renewal of license
Emotional well-being of Black attorneys
Black attorneys ending practice due to life events (family planning, financial, health)
The factors creating this condition in the legal space are multi-faceted. It's not just about fixing single points of failure. The system that educates and employs our country's attorneys needs to be retooled from top to bottom. The broader systemic issues affecting all communities (the cost of higher education, how debt causes people to delay or forego life events) comes to bear greater significance on communities in the margins - America's Black attorneys.
Should Race Matter in the Legal Profession?
Definitely. Representation matters with any service affecting the well-being of our communities: healthcare, teaching, farming, banking, everything.
We know there is systemic racism in our justice system. Marybeth Gasman, Associate Dean of Research at Rutgers University, shared data that 92% of civil and legal needs disproportionately affect communities of color. These are legal issues related to healthcare, housing, and income.
Consider our current issues with voting rights across the country. When those communities look for legal representation they understandably prefer an advocate who doesn't just sympathize with their struggle, but who comes from their community, and that person can't be found.
Imagining a More Diverse Legal Community
Let's keep it simple with a thought exercise that considers how many Black lawyers we could evenly spread out across all incorporated communities in the U.S. given today's numbers:
Total lawyers: 1,327,010
Estimated number of Black lawyers: 59,715
Number of incorporated communities in the US: 19,500
No. of Black lawyers per community: 3
Three Black lawyers per community. Also consider there are at least 21 legal specialties (bankruptcy, civil, corporate, criminal, family, health, immigration, etc.). A lawyer never practices in all areas of the law, which means that some places in the country will always have some practice of law that doesn't have representation.
The reality is that Black lawyers are not evenly spread out practicing law across the country. They congregate like the rest of society, around metropolitan areas and medium-sized cities. Those communities with less than 5,000 people in them (which are 76% of our incorporated places) don't see someone like themselves in their Main Street law offices.