Diversity efforts in independent schools.

Summary

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Law schools; law firm partnerships

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Diversity efforts in independent schools.

INTRODUCTION

A recent New York Times (1) article points out the sluggish speed at which leading law firms promote "minority" lawyers to partner. Even as law schools graduate higher percentages of people of color, (2) few end up on partner lists. (3) No hard data explains why young lawyers of color join or leave firms. Yet it is clear that shortly after most of them come, they go. The Times article relies on anecdotal information. Some commentators say firms do not promote lawyers of color because they do not bring in significant business. Others say lawyers of color lack access to mentors or advocates who could give them the visibility necessary to make partner. Apparently, many lawyers of color find life as government attorneys or in-house counsel more hospitable. One African-American lawyer described her outlook as follows "As a black female associate, I'm less willing to ride it out because I don't feel confident that there's a light at the end of the tunnel." (4) The article does not suggest overt racism at firms. (5) To the contrary, firms say they want to promote more minority lawyers and are genuinely frustrated at their lack of success. (6)

My father worked in a Wall Street firm for most of his adult life. He was a successful trusts and estates lawyer with Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam, and Roberts. (7) His rise in the firm, however, was a sluggish and frustrating journey. My father struggled not because of his abilities, but because of who he was: an Irish-Catholic who attended Fordham Law School at night. Wrong heritage, wrong religion, wrong law school, wrong time of day. The average attorney makes partner in eight years. It took my father twenty-four years. He was hired in 1937, did more than his fair share of grunt work, and became a partner in 1961. Were my father around today, he could surely offer insight into why law firms struggle in diversifying their partnerships.

Michael Sterlacci, a long-time Winthrop, Stimson partner, says my father, who died in 1981, was the first night student and first Irish-Catholic to make partner at the firm. (8) "It was a very WASPy firm back then," Sterlacci says, "If you were not from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia--but mostly Harvard and Yale--you were unlikely to make partner." Sterlacci says my father was finally given a break because, at the time he was hired, the firm had an "absolute need" for a trusts and estates lawyer. Not surprisingly, except, perhaps, to some old-school partners, my father turned out to be a good lawyer--"a good people person," according to Sterlacci--who paved the way for others in Winthrop who did not fit the white shoe p...

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