Introducing: Black Lawyers Speak - podcast episode cover

Introducing: Black Lawyers Speak

Nov 27, 20202 min
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Episode description

Despite decades of work to educate more Black lawyers, the percentage of Black associates and partners in firms across the U.S. remain very low, and well below those of other professional careers. Big Law firms across the board are ramping up social justice efforts as the nation engages in a renewed dialogue on race and equality. But some have accused firms of using minorities as “diversity props” to impress clients and misrepresent their inclusiveness to potential employees. So what are law firms doing to fix their lack of diversity?

Hosts Adam Allington and Lisa Helem, along with reporters Ayanna Alexander, Ruiqi Chen, and Meghan Tribe, interviewed lawyers across the industry, from corporate general counsels to top Am Law 200 lawyers to current law students, each sharing their experience navigating the legal space as a person of color. We try to answer what law firms are doing to recruit more diverse classes of lawyers, and how they are addressing barriers to entry for Black lawyers.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

This is Adam Allington. I'm a senior podcast producer at Bloomberg Law, and I'm Lisa Helen, executive editor for Strategic Initiatives, and we're here to announce a new season of Uncommon Law, a narrative podcast series from Bloomberg Law. As last summer's protests against police violence and systemic racism continue to reverberate, we'll focus our attention and how those events are impacting

the world of large corporate law firms. We're calling this first series Black Lawyers Speak, stories of the past, hopes for the future. And while there's been renewed attention on diversity and inclusion in these last six months, Big Laws track record in this area remains very much a work in progress. Many of our graduates go into spaces in which they are one of the only African American lawyers.

They may be the only African American lawyer. The thing that always gets me about racism is how much money white people are willing to give up to prop it up. You'll hear a range of voices from across the legal community, including associates and partners, law school deans as well as general counsel. We will very regularly look at those metrics, because there may be firms that do well for a year or two but then fall behind. We'll also hear

from some pathbreaking African American attorneys in corporate law. How have they dealt with issues of inclusion and what changes are they hoping to see in the profession. When I first started teaching at nineteen eighty six, you used to have to spend the time as the first half an hour of subdiversity and discussion, convinsing people that diversity was an important goal. You don't have to do that anymore. But the problem is they haven't made a huge amount

of progress. It's not fair, But what can be better than being on the front lines of helping to make this country better for all of us? If not us, who? If not now? When? If you'd like to learn more about how the business of law intersects with the issues of social justice and a culture, then this is the podcast for you. Just search for Uncommon Law wherever you get your podcasts.

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