NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.
Roughly 200 attorneys representing law firms, law schools, bar associations, corporations, and other organizations met this past weekend near Washington, D.C., to develop ideas to facilitate greater diversity in the U.S. legal profession. The American Bar Association (ABA) convened the attorneys during its Presidential Diversity Summit titled “Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Next Steps?” at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center.
Citing the demographic predictions that the United States will have a non-White majority by the middle of this century, ABA officials talked largely about the need to attract more underrepresented minorities to the legal profession while also making the profession more attractive to women, individuals with disabilities, and individuals in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Conference attendees also deliberated on improving retention rates of diverse attorneys in law firms and in public service. According to the U.S. Census in 2000, Blacks accounted for 3.9 percent of U.S. lawyers; Hispanics were 3.3 percent; and Asians were 2.3 percent of U.S. lawyers.
“I’ve said that, when gifted men and women of diverse backgrounds face systemic barriers to entering law school, to doing well on the admissions test, to matriculating from law school, and to rising in our profession, it’s not just a lack of opportunity for those individuals, it is a loss opportunity for the legal profession as we try to serve an evermore diverse population,” said H. Thomas Wells, president of the American Bar Association, at the summit’s opening reception.
Wells said the summit was aimed at helping renew ABA efforts to develop a diverse legal profession. According to Wells, the ABA over the past 20 years has seen diversity efforts reach a peak – “a point where only about 12 percent of the lawyers of this country come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.”
“While that is double the level 25 years ago, we lag shamefully behind the rest of society,” Wells said.
Summit keynote speakers included Kareem Dale, special assistant to President Barack Obama for disability policy; U.S. Rep. G. K. Butterfield, D-N.C.; Weldon H. Latham, senior partner of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Washington, D.C.; and Judge Cruz Reynoso, former justice of the California Supreme Court and professor emeritus at the University of California Davis School of Law.
