Black Lawyers Matter: Enduring Racism in American Law Firms

Scholars and practitioners have looked extensively at patterns of racial inequality in U.S. business law firms. In the corporate bar, pull factors that have long shaped legal professionals’ careers include promotions, outside job offers to move from one firm to another, or family priorities that may lead to leaving the labor force altogether. Push factors, such as discrimination, problems with management, and work-life conflict also precipitate work transitions. Beyond business law firms, however, an important question remains open to empirical scrutiny: How does race affect career moves in the contemporary American legal profession? In this article, I address this question by using data from the first nationally representative, longitudinal survey of lawyers in the United States. This study is one of the few that employ event history analysis as a statistical technique to examine legal careers. It also draws from in-depth interviews to unravel how lawyers describe their experiences in law firms. Findings from the assessment of work histories of over 4,000 law school graduates from the time they were admitted to practice in 2000 show that, all else being equal, Black lawyers are pushed out of private law firms at much higher rates than white lawyers. These legal professionals detail how race influences the distribution of assignments and the promotion process within American law firms. As Black lawyers continue to strive for racial equality, these results indicate that race-conscious remedies remain critical not only for the future of law firms but for the broader legal profession.