BigLaw’s Race Problem: A Conversation with Professor Anthony V. Alfieri

Join us for an insightful event with the Legal Professions Research Group and Professor Anthony V. Alfieri from the University of Miami School of Law.

This hybrid event will be followed by a small reception. For any questions, please email g.rogers@leeds.ac.uk.

Abstract

Ever since the 1970s when large law firms began to hire Black lawyers into their associate ranks, large law firms have wrestled with problems in both recruiting and retaining Black associates. Ultimately, BigLaw firms have struggled with the low numbers of Black attorneys who become partners, particularly equity partners, within their organizations. Past scholarship has explored how racial bias and discrimination, both within large law firms and greater society, contributed to such failures in the recruitment, retention, and promotion of Black lawyers in BigLaw firms. More recent scholarship has expanded this exploration advancing a theory about how ‘racial discomfort’, and specifically ‘social alienation’ and ‘stigma anxiety’ related to race, have functioned together to create and maintain racial disparities in attrition and partnership at large law firms. This essay considers the insights of this emerging scholarship against the backdrop of contemporary high-profile employment discrimination litigation embroiling large law firms and narratives about the experiences of Black associates in large law firms across the United States. In so doing, this essay centers on a recent case, Kaloma Cardwell v. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, in which the plaintiff, a Black former associate, alleged he had been fired in retaliation for raising concerns about racial discrimination at his law firm. The essay concludes by identifying and assessing innovative firm- and industry-wide policies that can mitigate the impact of racial discomfort on Black associates’ prospects for thriving in and attaining partnership at large law firms.

About the Speaker

Anthony V. Alfieri is a Professor of Law, the Michael Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, and the founding Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Service and its Black Church Program, Community Equity Lab, and Legal Profession Program at the University of Miami School of Law. He holds a secondary faculty appointment as a Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Professor Alfieri supervises graduate and undergraduate students working on education, research, and policy projects in the fields of civil rights and poverty law, public health, and professional responsibility and the legal profession.