Former Rep. Harold Ford served as the keynote speaker for the symposium.
A recent symposium at the University of Baltimore School of Law took on the issue of diversity in the legal profession, highlighting the need for improved recruitment and retention of minorities and women in Maryland’s, and the nation’s, top law firms.
According to the American Bar Association, women account for only 17 percent of equity partners at American law firms, despite making up 34 percent of the legal profession. African Americans currently only make up 4.8 percent of the legal profession overall. Troublingly, the profession remains over 88 percent White.
For Ron Richardson, chair of the Monumental City Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Monumental City Bar Association which distributes grants to community-based organizations serving underprivileged populations, the profession has “obviously come a long way, but we obviously have a long way to go. Most of the major firms do not have a lot of minority equity partners.”
The symposium, held on Oct. 13 and titled “Symposium on Race and Gender: Embracing Diversity in the Legal Profession,” was the result of what Richardson calls “collaborative competition” between his foundation and the Baltimore Bar Foundation.
Richardson noted that many minority and women lawyers end up in government work or solo practice rather than reaching the upper ranks of large law firms. “They’re just not able to get into the door of the larger firms,” said Richardson.
This lack of diversity at the partner level is not simply a problem for lawyers of color and women, but for the firms themselves, who compete over corporate clients who increasingly require diverse representation in exchange for their lucrative business. “ are all learning that as the world globalizes, and we are becoming in many senses one world – economics and just about every way you can think of – have people of multiple diversities actually benefits the whole team package that these corporations are looking for because they are involved in many international affairs,” said Richardson.
For Neil Duke, chair of the fundraising committee of the Baltimore Bar Foundation, said, “One of the clear benefits of having a diverse team working on a project is that through that particular diversity, problems are approached differently, as opposed to a monolithic sort of thinking as a result of having shared similar experiences.”
Among the principal takeaways from the day’s panel discussions, according to both Richardson and Duke, was the need for firms to take a two-pronged approach to improving diversity. They should increase not only recruitment of minorities and women, but also retention efforts, particularly in the form of mentorship programs so that minority and women associates feel that the path to partnership is open to them.
Additionally, Richardson says, conversations about diversity need to continue. “The topic of diversity in the legal profession is not commonly addressed, and so such as this, in my humble opinion, are desperately needed.”
