At least a dozen law firms in Atlanta, a city central to the civil rights movement, have no partners of color. How do they explain themselves?
As the nation recently marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark court decision Brown v. Board of Education and the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, much of the celebration focused on Atlanta, birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a city instrumental in the civil rights movement. While in the past, Atlanta—and the entire South—was segregated, today the city is a cosmopolitan, multicultural hub.
Atlanta's storied history is noted in landmarks such as the birth home of King, the Carter Center, the King Center, and Hartsfield Jackson International gateway airport, recently named to recognize an African-American. Gone are the blatant discriminatory signs and laws. Three African-Americans, including a woman, have been mayor of Atlanta. People of color have made great strides all over the city, working as legislators, judges, academic scholars, and executives at major corporations. Atlanta is touted as a diverse and progressive city that increasing numbers of minority professionals choose to call home.
Yet, within about a dozen of Atlanta's small law firms, partnerships still are "whites only." A handful are even still "men only." These facts come from data supplied by the firms themselves for the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) annual law firm questionnaire, which NALP makes available online (www.nalpdirectory.com) and on paper for students and others looking for jobs in law. While Diversity & the Bar®; chose to focus on Atlanta because of its civil rights history, numerous other firms nationwide also do not have minority or female partners.
Members of NALP filled out 1,689 questionnaires, listing everything from practice areas and hiring attorneys, to the number of summer associates who get offered positions, to annual salaries. In Atlanta, 51 law firms and legal non-profits filled out the NALP questionnaire. Of those 51 firms, 12 do not have partners of color (see sidebar). Three—Burr & Forman, Stites & Harbison, and Weinstock & Scavo—also do not have female partners.
How do these firms explain why, in this day and age, their partnerships are reserved for white men? Several firms did not return repeated telephone calls. But those who did speak point to a variety of reasons for their lack of diversity at the partnership level—the firm's small size, its specialty area, and its difficulty in recruiting minorities to move through the partner track, among others.
At Stites & Harbison in downtown Atlanta, there are 10 white male partners. Dan Douglass, hiring attorney and partner in the Southern and Midwestern firm's Atlanta office, says the firm treats its of counsel members similarly to partners. There are six white male attorneys of counsel and two white females. Two African-American associates have recently joined the staff, due to a merger with Robert Thompson & Associates.
Douglass admits the firm has work to do. "We've not had enough representation [from minority attorneys] in the past and we're working to improve that right now," he says. "Firm-wide, the numbers vary between offices. In Atlanta, we're trying to add [female and/ or minority] attorneys at the partner and counsel level so we can have folks in leadership and mentoring positions for the associates [of color] we're trying to bring in," Douglass adds.
Stites & Harbison does most of its recruiting through executive search firms and does make lateral hires. But Douglass says the firm also wants associates who move through the ranks to become partners and of counsel. Since it takes years for associates—whether female, male, or of color—to complete the partner track, "If we want to get [diversity] in a shorter amount of time, we have to go out there and encourage folks to make a lateral move," he adds.
The firm recently attended the Southeastern Minority Job Fair, held in Atlanta during the American Bar Association convention, and Douglass interviewed several dynamic candidates. "The law students really take those seriously and it's a great opportunity to see some good folks," he says, adding that he has attended minority job fairs for the past few years. "We saw some extremely good candidates, including some from schools [at which] we don't typically recruit," he comments.
As much as Stites & Harbison wants diversity within, the firm recognizes it as an issue for clients as well. "We've had clients indicate they are interested in having their outside counsel reflect the diverse background of the American population. These are clients who are working hard to do the same thing," says Douglass. "I don't think it's ever been a problem [attracting clients] but it's certainly in our interest to do that as well," he continues.
At Needle & Rosenberg, it is the specialty area that limits the number of partners of color, says Pat Greco, director of human resources for the intellectual property firm. "All of our attorneys have bachelor's degrees in science, and many have doctorates and master's degrees in a biological or chemical science. It's very difficult at the partner level to find [minority candidates], but we are beginning to have better results on an associate level, because more and more African-Americans are going into the field of science, where before they just weren't out there," she says. Greco notes that the firm recently hired a recruiter out of Washington, DC, due to its proximity to the federal patent offices, which led to the hiring of an African-American male associate. An African-American female associate, a former summer associate, also recently was hired. "We exhausted the Atlanta marketplace-it's very difficult to find folks with the degrees we need in addition to a law degree. There are many attorneys of color with law degrees, but few have the scientific degrees to go along with that, and all our attorneys must have that," Greco stresses.
Greco notes that while there are no minority partners, the office staff is diverse. "We look for diversity everywhere," she says. "On the staff level, you do not need the scientific degrees," Greco adds.
The expectations of Smith Moore LLP also limit the demographics of the partners, according to Eddie Newsom, hiring attorney for the firm, which also has offices in North Carolina. "We are so small—we've done very little hiring, particularly out of law school. It's been older, lateral hires with books of business," he says. "We're looking for folks who've been practicing for a period of time," he emphasizes.
Diversity is an issue, but the firm is more interested in qualified candidates, Newsom explains. "Our position is to encourage diversity wherever possible. That's always something that we're interested in as we look for a qualified person," Newsom adds. "If [the qualified candidate] is a minority candidate, that's wonderful, but we're in a little different situation in Atlanta," he says, noting that the firm's office here is small—eight partners total, all except one, a white male—and does not hire right out of law school.
Dow Lohnes & Albertson also cites its size as the reason for its lack of partners of color. But Jill Harrison, the firm's only female partner, says it does have diversity. "I wouldn't term it as lack of minority partners in any sense—I myself am a woman," she explains. "We are taking all efforts to examine diversity, but I would not in any way say the firm lacks diversity," she stresses.
According the NALP data, Dow Lohnes & Albertson has eight white male partners in addition to Harrison, who is a member of the Atlanta Legal Diversity Consortium, and attends its meetings and programs. The firm's Washington, DC headquarters does have partners of color as well as female partners, Harrison says. "Dow Lohnes has taken considerable efforts to examine these issues, but we're a small office here," she points out.
| RICK PALMORE LEADS INITIATIVE TO MAKE FIRMS DIVERSE By I. Clayvon Lighty Roderick Palmore, general counsel of Sara Lee Corporation, is indeed serious about making the legal community more diverse. Palmore drafted an epistle to other general counsel this summer requesting them to sign a letter committing to give more business to law firms that are dedicated to inclusiveness. Palmore's letter comes five years after the first action of its kind in the legal community. In 1999, Charles Morgan, the former general counsel of Bell South Corporation, circulated the "Diversity Statement of Principle," which encouraged law firms and law departments to hire more minorities. What's different about Palmore's letter? Sara Lee's general counsel is asking his colleagues, who are other general counsel, to distribute work in accordance with the law firm's diversity record. He's taking it a step further because he wants those who are not committed fired. The letter also asks law departments to give more work to outside counsel that promote inclusiveness in their workplace. Palmore's efforts are supported by the American Bar Association (ABA), the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), and MCCA®. Additionally, amongst the leaders that plan to participate are these initial signers: Jose de Lasa at Abbott Laboratories, Douglas Bain at The Boeing Company, Richard Ziegler at 3M Company, and Catherine Lamboley at Shell Oil. MCCA thanks Palmore for his dedication to inclusiveness. For an update about this "Call to Action," watch for the upcoming Jan./Feb. 2005 issue of Diversity & the Bar®. |
Another explanation for the lack of partners of color was that the Atlanta office is one of many offices, and those other offices did have minority partners. "With respect to firm-wide demographics, we do have attorneys and partners of color in a number of the other offices," explains Lisa Heller, hiring partner at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. The firm's other offices are in Washington, DC, Boston, and Minneapolis.
While the Atlanta branch, currently home to 17 attorneys, was started by two partners in Minneapolis, "As we have grown and focused our [insurance] practice to become more of a local practice, we have indeed begun to address our hiring, which is to hire qualified people and to include diversity as an aspect of our hiring," says Heller. "One of the mandates for any hiring is, we must have a diverse slate of candidates for every hiring decision we approach," she states.
That means hiring at the entry level and bringing people up through the ranks, such as the two attorneys of color—one African-American female and one Asian male—who are on the partnership track, says Heller. "Talented candidates, including [those] who are attorneys of color, are in high demand," she adds. But the firm has struggled in securing high-level minorities. "Part of our challenge is being a regional office. Do people want to come into a regional office? The second part is even though we are a large firm, we are different in that a large part of our practice is based on alternative fee billing," she explains. "It's difficult for us to laterally hire people from more traditional firms—attorneys of color or not—because contingent billing is a different mindset," Heller adds.
One of the ways the firm attempts to increase diversity is through participation in the Southeast Black Law Students Association (BLSA) Job Fair. "We have also instituted a program where we're looking to hire outstanding 1Ls and have them see and understand the firm early on in the process," says Heller. "We are constantly looking at diversity issues and trying to improve diversity, because we believe that it improves our service to our clients."
Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore LLP in downtown Atlanta also only hires entry-level attorneys, says Kelly Gwynn, attorney recruitment manager. "We don't do partner trades—you can't come in as a partner," she explains. "You start at the beginning."
While the firm has a couple of minority associates, they are hard to come by, says Gwynn. "We only hire from the top schools, and the top five-to-ten percent of those schools. Any minority candidate that is in that ball park is so highly recruited that it's hard for a small firm like us," she adds. "Even though we're a boutique and well-known, we're only litigation—we don't have any other areas of practice. We're so specialized and so small that somebody has to want to come to a small, specialized litigation firm."
The firm also hires only about one to two attorneys per year, Gwynn explains. The firm has written letters about its practice to various minority organizations on law school campuses but, "Because we're so small, we don't want to write 500 letters and get 500 people interested and then say, 'There's only one position,'" she says. "We're a great firm and we have a good reputation. At same time, our small size hinders us. We have to watch how much we do try to recruit because we don't have the space."
Griffin, Cochrane & Marshall, with four white male partners and one white female partner, has a similar challenge in recruiting minority attorneys, let alone partners of color, says Taffy Stills, the firm's legal administrator. "Qualified minority candidates tend to go to larger firms," she says, adding that the firm's practice area—construction—also is not a draw. "We do construction litigation—that's not why people go to law school to begin with. We continue our recruiting efforts just as everyone else does, but [minority candidates] tend to find other practices to be more attractive."
According to Stills, the firm uses the same criteria for all candidates. "Ethnic background is not taken into consideration at all," she explains. "Those candidates seem to be fairly sought after—if someone is in the top 20 percent of their class, they are top commodities."
To this firm, even getting its females on board is considered a success, Stills adds. "We're in a customarily male industry."
With just five partners (two are female) in the small Atlanta office of a 300-attorney international firm, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner prefers to recruit candidates from the ground level, according to Paul Sevanich, attorney recruitment manager, who works out of the Washington, DC office. "We don't have a quota or anything like that but we are very focused on diversity," he says, adding that the firm has a diversity scholarship. "We're better able to increase our diversity at the entry level with the students out there—it just takes time," Sevanich states.
| Firms With No Partners of Color in Atlanta (based on data from NALP law firm questionnaire 2004-2005):
** Did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment, therefore data are from February 1, 2004. |
Constangy, Brooks & Smith does not have size as an excuse, as the firm—with most of its offices in the South—has 20 partners and attorneys of counsel in Atlanta. Two are white women; the rest are white men. There are no partners of color in Atlanta, but there are partners of color in other offices, says Mike Blumenthal, managing member in the Kansas City, Mo., office and chair of the firm's diversity council.
The Atlanta office until recently had two African-American male partners, but one left law and the other relocated to Florida, Blumenthal explains. But he insists that the firm wants partners of color. "It's an issue we're focusing hard on recruiting aggressively for," he says. Blumenthal points out that over the past several years, Atlanta's office has hired six African-American associates (including three women), one Hispanic associate, and one Asian associate. But the firm does not focus on ethnicity, he adds. "We would hire anybody who is going to add value to our firm, regardless of color or gender. If we had a candidate who was of color or a woman who had the background and experience that could contribute to our team, that would be something we would welcome," says Blumenthal.
In January, the firm-wide diversity council was formed and charged with creating diversity initiatives such as a formal statement on diversity, a newsletter, networking groups for minority attorneys, and the formalization of a flextime policy to engage more women attorneys. "When we spoke to experts on this issue with regard to the retention of women, there's a perception that you cannot be an associate unless you're a full-time associate and you cannot be a successful partner unless you're a full-time partner," Blumenthal explains. "That was not the case in our firm—we've always had flexibility for our employees, but it was not a formalized process," he continues.
So in Atlanta, the historic home of the civil rights movement and one of the most diverse cities in the country, will law firms without any partners of color truly work to rectify the situation? Blumenthal says with its formation of a diversity council, Constangy Brooks & Smith is ready to make the commitment to diversity. "It must begin with understanding that it's the right thing to do and now's the time. That's how our firm is approaching this issue."
Will other firms follow suit? Or will they continue to use their size, hiring status, practice area, or other issues as excuses to remain enclaves for white men?
Melanie Lasoff Levs is a freelance writer.
From the November/December 2004 issue of Diversity & The Bar®