Chapter 8 Does Ethnicity Matter?

• Library: Accelerating Lawyer Success: How to Make Partner, Stay Healthy, and Flourish in a Law Firm (ABA) (2015 Ed.)

Minorities who make partner . . .

• Have a stronger drive for "bestness"
• Have more formal mentors who helped them in their careers . . . than Caucasians who make partner
• Enjoy difficult tasks more than minorities who don't make partner

Of herself, Serena Williams has said, "I'm a perfectionist. I'm pretty much insatiable. I feel there's so many things I can improve on." Her equally impressive sister, Venus, has made similar comments. "Some people say that I have an attitude. Maybe I do. But I think that you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does—that makes you a winner right there." In the very white world of tennis, Serena and Venus are minorities. Coming from a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles County, they worked their way up to the tennis elite by wanting it and working for it. This desire to win and be the best has served them well. Venus and Serena Williams are two of the sport's most accomplished athletes.

Although we primarily focused on the factors related to success for big-firm lawyers overall, we also looked to see if those factors varied for lawyers with different demographic characteristics. In this chapter, we will discuss the mind-set and work behaviors that stood out in successful minority lawyers. One caveat before we dive into our findings for this chapter: Minorities were a small and diverse part of our overall sample. With relatively few minorities in our sample, we could not separate out African American from Asian from Hispanic attorneys, for example. Nonetheless, even with a small and diverse sample, we thought it worth discussing the characteristics that significantly predicted success for minority attorneys in our sample.

Just like the world has witnessed with Venus and Serena, these successful minority lawyers have much the same drive. They want success and they work for it. Take Farah, for example. Farah made partner after a lateral move and a geographic relocation. She credits her ascension to partner in part by having fostered a unique skill set that she initially built just to reach her billable requirement. She also told us, however, that she thought about her career long term. According to Farah, doing great work for a client is not enough. She tells us that you really have to put yourself out there and promote yourself—you really have to stand out from the rest. So far, her story may sound fairly similar to other stories you've read throughout this book. However, as it unfolds over the next few pages, you'll see that her story is unique in a...