<p>Would appreciate anyone's perspective on this...</p>
<p>I've been researching the prospect of working biglaw after law school and noticed that all of the firms I researched had literally 0, maybe 1, partners, and 1-2 associates that were minorities. Is this because URMs rarely make it into the top 10% of the T14 and thus are never in their target pool? or because of other factors? I'm just curious as my employment prospects are necessarily going to have to play a role in my decision to ultimately take on law school debt.</p>
<p>URMs will get a boost for becoming an associate. You are right that they tend to be in the bottom of the class, but not so much as to keep them out at the entry-level - I don’t think your statistics are true, except maybe for some of the few very selective firms that require top 10% at T14. </p>
<p>However, you are definitely right that there are very few partners. Part of that is that partners are old, and things use to be worse, part is that URMs probably perform worse (because they get into more selective firms than their credentials would dictate), part is that corporations are more eager to poach them as general counsels, and a large part is undoubtedly that it’s hard to make connections, find mentors/role models and advance in a mostly white world.</p>
<p>Definitely right - I should have clarified that I was referring to the most selective firms out there (namely, top firms in the NYC market). Spent some time looking at L&W in LA today (since I’ve pretty much decided that I’ll be practicing in LA and will thus be emphasizing local law schools more than their counterparts in the NE), and it gets a bit better, though the pattern is definitely still there.</p>
<p>And your points are very reasonable. All things I suspected, except for your third point. Can you elaborate on that?</p>
<p>Also, I really have found it a bit difficult to network outside of my ethnic group at the undergraduate level as it is. I’ve even been met with blank stares and bad looks (eek!) Makes sense that it only gets worse from here.</p>
<p>Part of it is also that no one’s making you partner of a big firm unless you can enlarge everyone’s share of the pie. For that, there’s little room to use factors other than book size.</p>