The value of ethnic diversity.

The time for ethnic diversity in the legal profession has arrived. The numbers of minority law students have risen steadily during the past decade and are expected to go on rising. According to the annnual employer guide to law schools published by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), there were 124,952 students enrolled in 176 American Bar Association-approved law schools in 1993. Of these students, 20,622 - 16.5 percent - were minority members.(1) Law firms that write off this growing segment of new lawyers by failing to hire and advance them are handicapping themselves.

Most new graduates are hired by small and medium firms, not big ones. According to the NALP report, firms of 100 or more lawyers hired only 20.1 percent of new graduates in 1992. That year 32.6 percent of new lawyers, the single largest group, began their legal careers in small firms (2 to 10 people). An additional 11.5 percent accepted positions in medium firms (11 to 25 people).(2) These statistics have been consistent for more than a decade.

Small and medium law firms in the United States are mostly white and mostly male. This breakdown once reflected the law school population but now does not. Diversity is potentially easier to achieve in smaller firms because they are more flexible and less hierarchical than large ones. However, small and medium firms are seldom gender-balanced at the partner level. In fact, so rarely are they racially, inclusive that when they are, they may make headlines. It's time for this to change.

Finding New Business

Cultivating workforce diversity has evolved from "the right thing to do" to something with positive business value. Hiring people from diverse backgrounds can help law firms meet their own business goals.

The number of businesses owned by African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans is growing rapidly, and so are their revenues. These owners and their employees are potential clients. Many companies now purchase supplies and services from local businesses owned by minority members as a way to demonstrate their commitment to diversity and to reach out to a new market for their services.

Many minority business owners are more comfortable with lawyers of like backgrounds. Minority lawyers call bring business to the firm through their own social networks.

In 1972, the Black Enterprise list of the 100 largest African-American businesses reported that they generated $473 million in revenues. By 1988, the list had grown so that the 100 largest auto dealerships and 100 largest industrial and service organizations were broken out into separate listings. In 1992, the 200 largest African-American-owned businesses generated a total of $9 billion in revenues, with industrial and service companies generating $5.7 billion and automobile dealers the balance. The number of employees grew from 9,000 in 1972 to 44,372 in 1992.(3)

Similarly, Hispanic Magazine reported recently that according to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, there are currently, over 650,000 Hispanic-owned business in the United States.(4) By the year 2000, this number is expected to rise to a million, with $30 billion in sales.(5) It seems likely that businesses owned by people of Asian/Pacific Islander descent arc increasing too. The legal profession can either ignore these demographic shifts or figure out how to take advantage of them.

Changing Times

Other demographic changes will significantly alter the way law firms do business - especially small and medium firms devoted to personal injury work.

Juries now often include many minority, members. Minority jurors may respect lawyers of color more and be more sympathetic to their arguments. Working with these jurors is often easier when there is a lawyer of color on the team.

Another significant change in the legal environment is the growing use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Last year alone one private ADR company resolved over 10,000 cases primarily through mediation and arbitration.(6) Many were personal injury, cases. As mediation grows, personal injury lawyers who work on a contingent-fee basis will prosper on volume. Lawyers who gear themselves for higher volume will likely, take some smaller cases.

Usually insurance companies initiate mediation because it saves them money to move cases quickly. Insurance companies employ large numbers of minority adjusters, and adjusters often call the tune in mediation these days. Having a minority lawyer on the plaintiff's team helps the process go smoothly. It is also congenial to the growing number of minority plaintiffs, many of whom seek lawyers with ethnic backgrounds similar to theirs.

How to Diversify

Scores of efforts to improve law firm diversity have recently been launched. Many large firms are forming in-house diversity committees. Bar associations in cities across the country have encouraged member firms to adopt statements of goals for minority hiring and retention. For example, participating firms may pledge that by 1997, 10 to 15 percent of all their new hires will be minority members.

Unfortunately, good intentions are not always enough. Reports consistently cite dismal success rates and describe advances in the hiring, promotion, and retention of lawyers of color as slow.(7)

Becoming a diverse organization is actually quite simple. All that is required is that management make a commitment to inclusion.

If your organization is all or mostly white, you can begin building an inclusive workforce by getting the word out about your intention. Informal networking accounts for 80 percent of job-candidate referrals. When it becomes known that you are seriously recruiting minority members, you will attract more minority applicants.

How you get the word out will depend to a large extent on where you practice. If you are in a metropolitan area with local minority bar associations, you can get involved and tell members of your goal. These associations may have newsletters, career panels, and job support groups where you can list job openings. Perhaps you can attend association meetings or offer your expertise to their continuing legal education programs.

If you participate in other multiracial civic or cultural organizations, talk to people there about your goal of building an inclusive and diverse law firm. They will remember. Then, when you need to hire a secretary, paralegal, law student, or attorney, your network has already been primed to pass the word to potential minority candidates.

Many strategies for minority recruitment commonly used by large law firms and majority bar associations can be adapted for smaller firms. Here are some resources you call use in developing a comprehensive marketing and recruitment strategy.

* Local law school career services offices. Most offices publish regular job newsletters for graduates - a cost-free, efficient headhunting service. Many, offices also have telephone hotlines where job listings are updated daily or weekly.

If your firm needs clerks or paralegals rather than attorneys, consider hiring minority law students to work part-time during the academic year. This will allow you to get to know them and watch their legal skills develop. In my experience, new minority law graduates whose first jobs are in small, predominantly white firms nearly always had worked there as student law clerks.

When you post a position, invites minority members to apply. Some may not consider applying for jobs posted by all-white firms without an invitation. You will have to overcome their perception that "minorities need not apply."

Make an appointment to stop by and meet the head of the career services office at your local law schools, especially if you are a graduate. Career services administrators are human; they naturally put more effort into helping someone who has taken the time to meet them than someone who just phoned or wrote.

* Law school graduate associations. You can attend events at local law schools for networking purposes. Does your own law school's alumni office have an association of minority graduates? Find out which members of your graduating class may be active in the group and ask them to get the word out that your firm is interested in hiring minority candidates.

* Law professors. Teachers are good sources for referrals. Re-establish ties to faculty members you knew in law school. Tell them that you are always interested in getting their personal recommendation or referral of a minority student or graduate.

* Minority lawyers. Peers can provide you with the names of minority lawyers with trial experience gained in the offices of the public defender, district attorney, and state's attorney, as well as regional offices of federal agencies. Potential referral sources include lawyers and judges, public-sector attorneys, and members of minority bar associations with newsletters where you can list job openings.

Without referrals, minority lawyers in the public sector often find it hard to move into private practice because their networks include few practitioners from predominantly white firms. Their unsolicited resumes often receive only a cursory glance unless they were referred by someone known to the firm.

* Mentor programs. Some majority bar associations have created mentor programs for minority law students who attend law schools. Many lawyers of color participate, so volunteering to be a mentor will put you in contact with minority lawyers as well as law students. There are similar programs for high school students. These programs usually have both non-minority and minority volunteers.

If there are no such programs in your area, considered initiating one, especially as a collaborative effort of majority and minority bar committees. It will pay off both as a contribution to your local community and as a way to expand your network.

* Job fairs. An effective recruiting program for small and medium law firms was recently initiated by the Nassau County Bar Association of Long Island, New York. It was held in the spring to help law students get summer jobs and new graduate get permanent positions. (Typically, small and medium firms do not recruit on law school campuses in the fall because it is too soon to predict what hiring needs will be for the following year.)

Consider initiating a job fair sponsored by your local bar association for small firms. To ensure that you will meet a diverse group of candidates, reach out to minority law students and lawyers in advance. Invite them to participate. Indicate that the job fair is supposed to broaden ethnic diversity in the bar association and local law firms.

Interviewing

If this is the first minority lawyer your firm has hired, be straightforward about it during the interview. Most whites have had little experience with talking about race with people who are not white. It takes thought and practice to become comfortable in cross-cultural communication, but it is well worth the effort.

One of your goals when conducting job interviews is to learn what perceptions the interviewees have about working in a non-minority law firm. Your willingness to have this discussion with a candidate will help dispel any misperceptions about what it will be like to be the first person of color in your organization. Candidates will be glad to know that professional and personal support is available to help ensure their long-term success at your firm.

If it seems time-consuming to diversify, remember that unless you deliberately set out to do things differently, standard operating procedures will continue to prevail. In hiring, the standard procedure is known as "S.A.M." - same as me. Most people instinctively bring in new hires who look, act, and think the way they do. The smaller the number of openings, the more caution in hiring. S.A.M. maintains the status quo for the firm, the profession, and the community. Breaking with the status quo and making your law firm multicultural is a logical and smart way of expanding your market.

Looking Forward

Lawyers who understand that their colleagues and clients should be as diverse as their communities will prosper in the 21st century. According to Abraham Zalenznick, a psychoanalyst and Harvard Business School professor emeritus, "Anyone who wants to be around in the 21st century workplace needs to start adapting now. We will all have to honestly examine ourselves, sooner or later, in the process of remaking the way we do business - who we let in and who we keep out."(8)

Envisioning how the nation's work force will evolve during the next decades requires an open mind. Some people regard diversity recruiting and affirmative action as synonyms for preferential treatment for minorities. Diversity training programs can help some of these people understand that historically, white males received preferential treatment throughout the industrial and technological revolutions.

Affirmative recruiting to create a diverse workforce is not preferential treatment. It reflects an important perceptual shift - a new understanding that including minorities is not only fair but enriches the firm.

Notes

(1) Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian/ Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native. NATIONAL ASS'N FOR LAW PLACEMENT, 1993 NATIONAL DIRECTORY OF LAW SCHOOLS. (2) NATIONAL ASS'N FOR LAW PLACEMENT, CLASS OF 1992 EMPLOYMENT REPORT AND SALARY SURVEY 23 (1993). (3) Edward D. Irons, Economic Perspectives: Lending a Hand to Black Business, BLACK ENTERPRISE, Oct. 1993, at 28. (4) Latino Entrepreneur, HISPANIC MAG., Sept. 1993, at 56. (5) Id. (6) Ellen J. Pollock, Mediation Firms Alter the legal Landscape, WALL ST. J., Mar. 22, 1993, at B1. (7) See, e.g., Subcommittee on Retention of the Comm. to Enhance Professional Opportunities for Minorities, Report on the Retention of Minority Lawyers in the Profession, 48 REC. OF ASS'N OF BAR OF CITY OF N.Y. 355(1992); Caroline V. Clarke, The Diversity Dilemma, AM. LAW., Oct. 1992 (Supp.), at 29; Steven Keeva, Unequal Partners: It's Tough at the top for Minority Lawyers, A.B.A. J., Feb. 1993, at 50. (8) Stratford Sherman, A Brave New Darwinian Workplace, FORTUNE, Jan. 25, 1993, at 50.

Suzanne Baer is the assistant for minority representation and retention to the president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She thanks Lisa Isaac, a student at Brooklyn Law School, for her help in researching this article.