Percentage of Women and Minorities at Law Firms Continues to Edge Up

The following article was taken from the NALP website:

As in all the prior years that NALP has compiled lawyer demographic information from the NALP Directory of Legal Employers, the percentage of women partners edged up slightly, from 17.90% in 2006 to 18.34% in 2007. The percentage of minority partners also increased a bit, from 5.00% to 5.40%. Minority women accounted for 1.65% of partners, compared with 1.48% in 2006, the first year that the demographic information included race and gender together. Aggregate figures are shown in the table below. These findings include more than 135,000 lawyers in 1,562 offices, and over 12,000 summer associates in 1,171 offices reporting summer associates for summer 2007.

Representation of women and minorities increases in all lawyer categories. Among associates, 45.06% were women and 18.07% were minorities, compared with 44.33% and 16.72%, respectively in 2006. For other lawyers the figures were 35.16% and 8.87%, respectively, both up from figures of 34.08% and 8.18% in 2006. Among summer associates, the figure of 45.58% women represents a decrease from 2006 (46.67%), whereas the percentage of minorities (24.19%) was up from 23.05% the year before.

Because the demographic information captures race and gender together, we also know that the majority of minority partners are men, while among minority associates and summer associates, women outnumber men. In the coming weeks, NALP will be publishing more demographic analyses from the 2007 NALP Directory to show city-by-city information, as well as analyses for specific racial/ethnic minorities.

Note: Figures for partners, associates and other lawyers are based on 1,562 offices reporting information in the 2007 NALP Directory of Legal Employers. Figures for summer associates are based on 1,171 offices reporting one or more summer associates for summer 2007 and minority counts.

See full article including a chart of the statistics here.