THE RECORD - New York City Bar Association

T A S K F O R C E O N M I N O R I T I E S,
E N H A N C E D I V E R S I T Y I N T H E P R O F E S S I O N
• the Association publish an annual or at least an interim report
on the status of Minority hiring, drawing on the annual
retention survey which has been developed by the Committee
on Recruitment and Retention.
• the Goals be amended to strengthen the respective commitments
of the Association and signatories with regard to the
promotion of Minority lawyers to partnership or senior corporate
counsel status. In particular, the Task Force recommended
that this commitment be phrased in terms of the period of time
covered by the readopted goals.
The Committee has reviewed the Report and recommendation of the
Task Force and shares the concern of the Task Force that improved hiring
rates may not be resulting in a correspondingly larger Minority population
within law firms and corporate legal departments. Although the conclusion
of the Task Force Report that the Signatories have met or exceeded
the 10% Minority hiring goals for 1992-97 period is an encouraging sign
that greater participation of Minorities at all levels in law firms and corporate
legal departments may soon become a reality, available evidence,
though inconclusive and to some extent anecdotal, suggests that Minority
retention programs have been less successful than Minority hiring.
Moreover, as noted above, the evidence cited in the Task Force Report
suggests that different Minority groups have had different experiences,
with Asian-American associates increasing at a more rapid rate than African-American
and Hispanic associates.
These reports and anecdotal evidence appear to confirm that, consistent
with the findings of the Subcommittee on Recruitment and Retention
in 1992, retention of associates remains a serious obstacle to wider
participation of Minorities in law firms and corporate legal departments, 7
and that this phenomenon is particularly evident with respect to African-
American and Hispanic-American associates.
The Committee, therefore, believes it is important in restating and
extending the Statement to emphasize the critical nature of retention
programs to ensure that the goal of increased Minority participation in
7. The sources cited by the Task Force did not contain statistically significant data with respect
to the impact of the goals in corporate legal departments, but there is some evidence that the
data with respect to law firms may be comparable to the experience of corporate law departments.
See “Diversity in Hiring: NAACP Has Blunt Message for Corporate America,” N e w
York Law Journal, July 16, 1998.
M A R C H / A P R I L 1 9 9 9 ◆ V O L. 5 4, N O. 2
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