2006 Diversity Benchmarking Report

The 2006 Law Firm Benchmarking Report highlights both signs of progress and disappointment. Overall, the demographic composition of signatory firms, and the partnership in particular, has experienced little change since the last study despite considerable interest in diversity in the legal community. There is good news with sizable increases in new women partners and more firms collecting data on openly gay attorneys. Discouragingly, this data also indicates that signatory firms must intensify their efforts when it pertains to racial/ethnic minorities and attorneys with disabilities, where there has been stagnation and even decline. In addition, our first year of data on turnover rates confirms that attrition is an important contributing factor in the under representation of women and minorities at the highest levels of signatory firms.