Introduction

Practicing law “meaningfully” is incredibly subjective. As our class discussions illustrate, all of us have unique notions of what “meaningful” practice entails: furthering important social goals, accumulating wealth, intellectual stimulation, or some combination of all or none of these things. Despite that variation, I think there is cohesion among groups of individuals, especially Blacks and other underrepresented minorities, because of several common threads that have shaped our experiences.

Some of those experiences prompt us to seek wealth and status in a society that has fused race and economic domination, making White identity and whiteness sources of privilege and protection. Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property”, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1709. Practicing law at a large, predominantly white firm promises to bring us face-to-face with the ability to escape one form of economic domination, but may also force us to wrestle with the tradeoff between that freedom and injury to or loss of racial identity. Whether this tradeoff actually takes place depends on us thinking about how to use the license as an instrument to increase the value of diversity, either by strategic selection of law firms or through making changes at non-diverse firms using words.

The Benefits:

Black law students at CLS, like others at elite institutions, are in privileged positions, from competitiveness at top law firms to candidacies for clerkships, public interest fellowships, government jobs, and the like. Because the legal profession is highly stratified and because organizations often make hiring decisions based on law school reputation, we stand closer to the types of markers of prestige and success at variance with an overwhelmingly large portion of the Black community.

In making best efforts to distance ourselves from a legacy of subjugation, law firms and corporate practice serve as beacons toward achieving a level of financial freedom that diverges with the economic dominance plaguing Blacks from slavery to the present. To abandon that journey in law school, seems foolhardy, especially when the economic benefits are large, visible, and imminent.

The Costs:

Despite the financial benefits and reputational capital that corporate America provides, many Black lawyers will be forced to struggle with their identity and role as a minority in an organization that values assimilation into the majority. I have had many conversations with friends who will fearfully and begrudgingly work at a large, predominantly white firm upon graduation. For many of us, some measure of assimilation is not particularly novel: in higher education and professional schools, we are rarely taught not have to down those safeguards but how to assimilate into them--whenever possible.

However, unlike the educational context, where diversity is celebrated (at least to some degree), top corporations and elite law firms are comparatively worse at inclusiveness, creating tremendous incentives to abandon diversity by creating a “firm culture.” As an undergraduate, I participated in Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a career preparation program for minorities. In the last decade, these programs have proliferated, as more people of color begin their education on how to work within corporate America. Law firms have held similar workshops that speak to professionalism through assimilation, some with less than ideal consequences. While these programs can be tremendously helpful in ushering in many qualified and diverse candidates to top corporations and law firms, there remains a fundamental question as to whether promoting the assimilation into white corporate culture is the best for their participants.

Are Corporations Changing the Equation?

In “'Separate is Inherently Unequal' to 'Diversity is Good for Business," David Wilkins argues that most corporate firms are primarily concerned with recruiting clients and maximizing profit. However, these firms have also found that recruiting and hiring a diverse pool of candidates may reap reputational benefits, which may later manifest themselves as profits. But even with a modicum of commitment to diversity, there are still boundaries that define what type of minority candidate they are seeking.

To merge Harris and Wilkins, the commodity of Whiteness (a currency in heavy supply at law firms for generations) competes and conflicts with the relatively new commodity of diversity. Worse yet, real diversity, as exhibited through divergent viewpoints, interests, etc. is valued even less than hollow, purely descriptive diversity. Says Wilkins, “[m]angers have strong incentives to screen out potential employees whom they suspect of holding such disruptive views. Minorities are likely to be especially fearful of being too “diverse”. 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1588.

Being the Change

Assuming the goal is to force large corporate firms to embrace diversity in meaningful ways, students can counteract the trend of lip-service to diversity by collective action. By recognizing that we have the power to choose firms that affirm minorities rather than simply assimilate them, law students can create a market-based “race-to-the-top”: identifying law firms for those interested in working at humane and sensitive places. Indeed, Building a Better Legal Profession, has done some legwork to provide students with demographic data on partners and law firms across the country. Of course, there’s nothing stopping us from using collective action of a different sort, by creating firms that value diversity to the same degree that we do.

Conclusion

There are options available to those of us who want to go to law firms, but value diversity. However, they will require us to make changes by using both words and actions. We may use our licenses to force firms to develop better practices once minorities arrive at firms, select firms on the basis of their commitment to meaningful diversity, or start our firms altogether. But to point the finger at law firms while accepting a fate of assimilation or devaluation is a mistake. Should we choose not to seize the power that we have, we are no less responsible for mere lip-service to diversity than the firms themselves.