Final Chair Message: Diversity in the Bar & Final Thoughts

• Publication year: 2019
• Author: Stephen D. Hamilton

Final Chair Message: Diversity in the Bar & Final Thoughts

Stephen D. Hamilton

This will be my final Family Law News Message, as my term as Chair will end at the California Lawyers Association Annual Meeting in October in Monterey. The Family Law Section and FLEXCOM will then be in the very capable hands of incoming Chair Stephen Montagna of Fairfield, California. So I will use this final message as a proverbial soap box to address a subject that is important to our profession and an identified priority of the California State Bar, the California Supreme Court and the Judicial Council.

Diversity Within the Bar

The California State Bar published a revised "Fact Sheet: Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession" on May 14, 2019. That fact sheet notes that due to a statutory change effective in 2019, special emphasis on access and inclusion are now "core to the Bar's public protection mission." The Fact Sheet then provides statistical information on bar diversity. Under a heading that speaks for itself, the following statistics are provided:

California Attorneys are Less Diverse than State's Overall Population

This bar chart compares compares the percentage of White, Asian, Latino, Black, and Other California attorneys versus the percentage of the California population over the age of 18 in 2017. The chart shows 67 percent of California attorneys are White, while 41 percent of the population is White. Twelve percent of California attorneys are Asian, while 16 percent in the population are Asian. Six percent of attorneys are Latino, while 35 percent of the population is Latino. Three percent of attorneys are Black, while 6 percent of the population is Black. Lastly, attorneys classified as Other are 12 percent, while 2 percent of the population are classified as Other.
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What is clear from these statistics is that the Latino and Black communities are grossly underrepresented within the California State Bar. The disparity (which I will refer to as a representation deficit) in Black attorneys is 200%. That is, although they represent 6% of the state population, only 3% of the California State Bar identifies as Black. The statistics for the Latino community are even more disturbing. Although they represent 35% of the state population, only 6% of the bar identifies as being Latino. This is a representation deficit of 1,167 percent.

How to Address the Diversity Issue

I recently participated in a meeting between the...