A decade ago, dissatisfied with the glacial pace of recruitment of minority lawyers at his outside firms, Sara Lee Corporation’s then general counsel, Roderick Palmore, convinced 72 U.S. companies to agree to reduce or end ties with firms that showed a lack of commitment to diversity. Sure enough, the diversity dial moved; between 2004 and 2008, Asian and Hispanic lawyer head count jumped by a quarter, to 6.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, while African-American head count rose from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent, according to sibling publication The National Law Journal.
But last year, among the 77 Am Law 100 firms for which The American Lawyer has demographic data and equity/nonequity head counts, 31 firms still had either no black equity partners last year, or one. Since the recession, client pressure on diversity appears to have taken a backseat to reducing legal costs. “I think certainly it’s dropped down on people’s priority list,” says E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. general counsel Thomas Sager.
