So what do the hard numbers say about the diversity issue? Chicago attorney Sandra S. Yamate, director of the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, presented some figures during the ISBA Midyear Meeting in December.

Previously the first executive director of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms, Yamate is a founding member and past president of the Asian-American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area.

At the Dec. 8 program, “Strategies for Achieving Diversity in Your Organization,” she shared findings from the ABA commission's report, “Miles To Go 2000: Progress of Minorities in the Legal Profession,” based on reviews of academic, government, professional and other data sources.

“American demographics are changing rapidly and dramatically,” Yamate said, “but the legal profession isn't changing with it.”

The report shows that minority representation in the legal profession is dramatically lower than in other professions, she pointed out.

African-Americans, at 3.9 percent, are the best-represented minority in the law, and Hispanics follow at 3.3 percent. The ratio of African-Americans in the profession has declined in the past two years, while Asian-Americans are the fastest growing minority group.

Yamate reported that 28.8 percent of auditors and accountants, 24.6 percent of physicians and surgeons, and 18.2 percent of college and university teachers represent diversities.

“Clearly, these numbers show that our profession is lagging sadly behind. That concerns us greatly,” she said.

The number of minority law students has dropped over the past two years to slightly above 20 percent. Most of this drop can be attributed to the decline among African-American law students from 7.4 to 6.6 percent, a twelve-year low.

The commission also found that minorities have fewer judicial clerkships after law school and are more likely to start their careers in the public sector.

Minority women often feel the dual barriers of race and gender, although they have entered private practice at a slightly higher rate (53.9 percent) than minority men (53.0 percent).

In a separate study, Yamate wrote that minority retention has superseded recruitment “as the primary diversity concern of most large law firms.”

“While some firms are doing better than others in retaining minority lawyers,” she wrote, “none is doing so well that anyone knowledgeable about diversity would hold them up as a model for the rest of the legal profession.

“After some two decades of concerted effort, law firms … have not managed to grasp the finer points of what it takes to retain minority lawyers.”

Firms nationwide are retaining diversity consultants to aid them in retaining minority lawyers, but that's not the hard part. The trick, Yamate says, is to find the right consultant.

Law firms have different personalities, histories and philosophies, and this has to be considered when a consultant is hired. The firm has to determine what kind of approach it seeks and its desired results.

Other measures include diversity committees, diversity partners, affinity group caucuses and diversity retreats.

Yamate added that the ISBA is a terrific platform from which to launch a statewide study of diversity to address problems further.

“We know what the large firms in Chicago are doing,” she said, “but let's see what diversity looks like in other towns like Peoria or Champaign-Urbana.”

The more data collected from different areas, the better these issues can be addressed. “One of the challenges with diversity is the lack of data,” Yamate said, “so go out, collect it and publish it. That's where the ISBA can come in.”

She added that diversity is not just an issue for minorities, women or people with disabilities. “It's for our entire profession, and there's no right or wrong questions to ask.”

The program was sponsored by the ISBA Committee on Minority and Women Participation. It was coordinated by committee chair Alice M. Noble-Allgire of the Southern Illinois University School of Law and member Betty Y. Jang of the McDonald's Corp.