Diversity Scorecard - 2009

When we published last year's Diversity Scorecard, we said that this year's edition would take a more nuanced look at how law firms are faring in boosting diversity within their ranks. At the time, we predicted that our new approach would shake up the rankings. And it has.

By Ed Shanahan
The Minority Law Journal
May 01, 2009

Well, you can’t say we didn’t warn you.
When we published last year’s Diversity Scorecard, we said that this year’s edition would take a more nuanced look at how law firms are faring in boosting diversity within their ranks. At the time, we predicted that our new approach would shake up the rankings. And it has.
Last year’s first-place finisher, New York’s Cleary, Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, dropped all the way to a tie at number 20 on our list. And Cleary was hardly alone in falling out of the Scorecard’s upper echelon. All told, five firms lost their top 20 status altogether. One of those, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, plummeted more than 50 spots on this list, from number 6 to number 57.
On the flip side, our new method of calculating diversity was a boon to numerous firms. The most prominent beneficiary was Palo Alto’s Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which, after two consecutive second-place finishes, finally ascended to the top spot. Other winners included the seven firms that rose into the top 20. None climbed higher than Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgard & Smith of Los Angeles, which jumped from number 47 all the way to number 4.
All this churn comes courtesy of a new ranking formula adopted after we found ourselves wondering whether our traditional approach to measuring diversity—calculating the overall percentage of minorities within a firm—ignored something significant. Did it really make sense to treat all lawyers of color as essentially equivalent in stature? Should a firm get the same kind of credit for a minority associate as it does for a minority partner? We decided that it was time to start giving more credit to firms that have increased the racial diversity of their partnership ranks. Under our revised formula, we add each responding firm’s percentage of minority lawyers to its percentage of minority partners to come up with a diversity score. This number is a truer gauge, we believe, of what kind of progress a firm is making in hiring lawyers of color at every level, with an emphasis on those at the most senior levels. (Click here for a fuller explanation of our methodology, and a list of firms that did not respond.)
A look at the top of this year's rankings, makes it clear how much a higher-than-average percentage of minority partners contributed to some firms’ improved showing. Consider Lewis, Brisbois: At 12.1 percent, its proportion of minority partners is nearly double the average for all firms, 6.3 percent. Each of the other firms that climbed into the top 20 this year also has a higher-than-average percentage of minority partners: Carlton Fields (12 percent minority partners); Epstein, Becker & Green (13.9 percent); Howrey (9.8 percent); Hughes Hubbard & Reed (9.8 percent); Kenyon & Kenyon (12.1 percent); and Shutts & Bowen (13.4 percent). First-place finisher Wilson Sonsini boasts a minority partner percentage nearly triple the survey average.

Full Report: http://www.law.com/jsp/mlj/PubArticleMLJ.jsp?id=1202430425120&hubtype=Spotlight