Study: Lawyers who are women of color face difficult career path

By any measure, Sharon Jones has had a successful legal career-president of a consulting firm, law professor, federal prosecutor, author.

But when she graduated from Harvard Law School in 1982, Jones said her future looked bleak.

"There were very few women [lawyers], and there simply were no other Black, female lawyers," she said.

So Jones was not surprised to learn the results of a new American Bar Association study that found most women of color who enter the legal profession, end up following a shallow career path. Instead of promotions and partnerships, they can look forward to exclusion, harassment and dead-end assignments, the study revealed.

"Women of color experience a double whammy of gender and race, unlike white women or even men of color, who share at least one of these characteristics [with] the upper strata of management," said Pamela Roberts in a written statement Thursday announcing the study's results.

Roberts, who supervised the research, serves as chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.

The ABA report, entitled Visible Invisibility, canvassed nearly 1,000 attorneys nationwide who had worked in large law firms. Responding to a questionnaire, the lawyers, both men and women, reported their experiences during law school, the hiring process and over the course of their careers. A statistics team headquartered at the University of Chicago analyzed their responses.

The findings revealed that not only do women of color face discrimination and exclusion in their legal careers, but on-the-job inequities make them far more likely than other attorneys to leave law firms or drop out of the profession altogether.

Almost across the board, women of color reported unpleasant work environments and career hurdles they attributed to discrimination. Sixty-two percent said they missed, or were denied, crucial opportunities because of their race or gender, compared with only 4 percent of their white, male counterparts.

In addition, women of color often fight an uphill battle, challenging preconceived ideas that discredit their talents and abilities, the study found. Seventy-two percent said they felt co-workers doubted their commitment to the profession after they became parents.

Even more disturbing, the study reports, "many [women of color] complained that they often felt invisible or mistaken for persons of lower status: secretaries, court reporters, paralegals."

According to the report, those conditions are taking their toll.

"The stress of second-class citizenship in law firms [leads] many women of color to reconsider their career goals," the study states. "The retention rates [reflect] their lopsided experiences: 53 percent of women of color and 72 percent of white men chose to remain in law firms."

Most of the women of color surveyed said they had good experiences in their job searches and felt their race and gender were assets during the hiring process.

But Jones said the reason for this often has little to do with merit.

"The legal profession is one of the least diverse professions in the country," she said. "Corporate clients put a lot of pressure on law firms to be diverse . . . [because] their consumers are diverse, [and] they believe you get a better work product from diverse teams.

"Lawyers put a face on the companies [they represent]," Jones continued. "So [corporations] want the face to mirror their consumers' diversity."

In survey answers, some women of color said they thought they were hired to meet diversity quotas or promote relations with clients. One respondent described herself as "window dressing" for the firm that hired her.

"Women of color must be visible at all levels within private firms," said Roberts, who chairs the Chicago Bar Association's committee on racial and ethnic diversity. "If the legal profession is to move forward and reach its full potential, then it must reflect the diversity of society. Anything less is unacceptable."

Jones applauded the ABA for examining the issue.

"Now, that we know about the challenges that women of color face, we need to [find] solutions and strategies to assist them in being successful," she said.

[Author Affiliation]

Valerie Dowdle is a reporter for the Medill News Service.