NALP Bulletin+
February 2025

According to NALP's 2024 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms, 43.07% of 2024 summer associates identified as students of color — a record high. Since the onset of the Great Recession, this percentage has increased by approximately 19 percentage points. However, when these data are further disaggregated by race/ethnicity, there are stark differences in both recent and longer-term trends.

Table 1 displays trend information on the representation of summer associates by race/ ethnicity since 2009. Over the long-term, most racial/ethnic groups have made substantial gains in representation, except for Native and Indigenous students, where the figures have been flat. Native American and Alaska Native students made up 0.37% of summer associates in 2009, compared to 0.35% in 2024; while the corresponding figures for Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander students were 0.14% in 2009 and 0.16% in 2024. However, Native and Indigenous women now account for a larger share of these positions compared to 15 years ago.

Overall, the representation of Asian summer associates has grown by more than seven percentage points since 2009, and they now comprise nearly 18% of all summer associates. Since 2022 alone, this figure has increased by nearly two percentage points. Likewise, the percentage of Latinx summer associates has more than doubled since 2009, growing from approximately 4.1% to 9.2% now, although Latinx representation has been fairly stable since 2022. The share of multiracial summer associates has quadrupled over the last 15 years, growing from about 1.3% in 2009 to 5.1% of summer associates in 2024. However, since 2022, the representation of multiracial students has actually declined by about one-third of a percentage point. Much of the overall growth in Asian, Latinx, and multiracial summer associates since 2009 can be attributed to the increasing representation of women in these racial/ethnic groups.

In comparison, long-term growth in the representation of Black or African American summer associates has been more sluggish. Their figures have grown by less than three percentage points since 2009, increasing from approximately 7.4% in 2009 to 10.2% in 2024. Concerningly, the representation of Black summer associates has actually fallen by about 1.6 percentage points since 2022, when they accounted for approximately 11.9% of all summer associates. This is, by far, the largest decline across all racial/ethnic groups over the past two years, and the 2024 figures for Black summer associates were the lowest since 2019. (See Chart 1.)

Much of the recent growth in the representation of summer associates of color has come from an increasing share of Asian summer associates, while growth across most other racial groups has declined or been relatively flat since 2022. Summer associates represent the pipeline of future associates at law firms, and thus, these demographic shifts can forecast changes that could be observed in the associate figures over the next several years. While there is much to be celebrated in the 2024 Diversity Report, the summer associate data show some areas of longer-term concern that NALP will be examining.

Additional findings from NALP's 2024 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms are available at on the Report on Diversity page.

Table 1. Percentage of Summer Associates by Race/Ethnicity, 2009-2024

Source: NALP Directory of Legal Employers, 2009-2024

Chart 1. Percentage of Asian, Black or African American, and Latinx Summer Associates, 2009-2024