| BACK TO LIST $320.00Survey Name: Diversity Scorecard The Diversity Scorecard contains detailed information on minority legal staffing
levels at law firms in the NLJ 250 and Am Law 200. Key data points include:
- Number of U.S. citizen attorneys;
- Percentage of minority attorneys;
- Specific figures for four major ethnic/racial groups: African-American attorneys,
Asian-American attorneys, and Hispanic-American attorneys
- Breakdown by partner and non-partner attorneys
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| Methodology/Sources: |
The American Lawyer surveyed the country's largest and
highest-grossing firms, including the 250 biggest firms as ranked by The National Law Journal
plus a few included in The American Lawyer's Am Law 200 but not in the NLJ 250.
Firms are identified by the office with the largest concentration of attorneys. If a firm has
no more than 45 percent of its attorneys in one region, it is considered national. If more
than 40 percent of the attorneys are located outside the United States, the firm is designated
international.
Partner statistics include both equity and non-equity partners. Non-partner figures include
associates as well as special counsel, of counsel, and other staff attorneys. We do not
include contract attorneys. The heading "other minority" includes Native Americans and those
attorneys who said they were multiracial. Unless noted otherwise, all figures are as of
December 31, 2010.
In our view, ethnic diversity is defined primarily in American terms. When you ask whether a
firm is achieving ethnic diversity, you're asking how well it's doing in hiring minority
Americans. In the past, some firms had trouble accurately reporting the citizenship of all
their attorneys. For this reason, we now ask firms to count only the minority attorneys
working in U.S. offices. Dividing that number by the number of all attorneys a firm employs
in the United States gives us the percentage of a firm's U.S. attorneys who are members of
ethnic minorities.
In the past, rankings were based only on the minority percentage of all U.S. attorneys.
Starting in 2009, we’ve revised our rankings to stress the importance of hiring and promoting
minority attorneys to partnership positions. Our new diversity score was created by adding
the minority percentage of all U.S. attorneys at the firms surveyed to the minority percentage
of all U.S. partners at those firms.
In addition, the Diversity Scorecard includes female staffing data, which is self-reported,
unpublished data gathered as part of the 2011 NLJ 250; April 25, 2011.
The NLJ 250 is the National Law Journal’s survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms covering
the calendar year period from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. Staffing counts are based on
a firm's average FTE attorneys for full year 2010, not including contract or temporary attorneys.
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