According to the latest law firm demographic findings from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), women and minority partners continued to make small gains in their representation among law firm partners as a whole in 2014.
At the same time, the percentage of minority associates has gone up for the fourth year in a row after falling in 2010 in the wake of the recession. Although the percentage of women associates increased a bit after eroding from 2010 to 2013, it has yet to go above the 45 percent mark reached in 2009-2012.
NALP’s newest findings on law firm demographics reveal that law firms have more than recouped the ground lost when minority associate figures fell in 2010 following widespread associate layoffs in 2009.
In addition, the representation of women among associates finally nudged up after declining for four years in a row, returning to the general pattern of steady though small increases in place since NALP started compiling this information in the 1990s.
Among associates, the percentage of women had increased from just under 39 percent percent in 1993 to 45.66 percent in 2009, before falling back in each of the four following years.
The trend reversed in 2014.
Over the same period, minority associate percentages have increased from 8.36 percent to 21.63 percent, more than recovering from a slight decline from 2009 to 2010.
Representation of minority women among associates has increased from just about 11 percent from 2009-2012 to 11.51 percent in 2014.
In 2014, the percentage of both women and minority partners in law firms across the nation increased a small amount over 2013.
Representation of minority women specifically was up by a small amount, as was representation of minorities as a whole.
During most of the 22 years that NALP has been compiling this information, law firms had made steady, if somewhat slow, progress in increasing the presence of women and minorities in both the partner and associate ranks.
In 2014, that slow upward trend continued for partners, with minorities accounting for 7.33 percent of partners in the nation’s major firms, and women accounting for just over 21 percent of the partners in these firms.
In 2013, the figures were 7.10 percent and 20.22 percent, respectively.
Nonetheless, the total change since 1993, the first year for which NALP has comparable aggregate information, has been only marginal.
At that time minorities accounted for 2.55 percent of partners and women accounted for 12.27 percent of partners.
At just 2.45 percent of partners in 2014, minority women continue to be the most dramatically underrepresented group at the partnership level despite small, but consistent year-over-year increases.
The representation of minority women partners is somewhat higher, just under three percent, at the largest firms of more than 700 lawyers.
Minority men, meanwhile, account for just 4.88 percent of partners this year, compared with 4.84 percent in 2013. This means that most of the relative increase in minorities among partners can be attributed to increased representation of minority women.
For lawyers as a whole, representation of women (both minority and non-minority) was up by about seven-tenths of a percentage point and is now higher than in 2009, after being below that level from 2010-2013.
The representation of minorities among lawyers as a whole also rose a bit in 2014, to just under 14 percent.
Some of the gain among women overall can be attributed to increases in women among the partnership ranks.
However, it should also be noted that some of the increase can be attributed to increased representation of women in general and minority women specifically among lawyers other than partners and
associates, such as “of counsel” and staff attorneys, who in 2014 accounted for 13 percent of attorneys at these firms.
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