NALP Bulletin+
July/August 2023

Just as the country has become more diverse with respect to race and ethnicity over the past thirty years, so has the JD enrollment at ABA-accredited law schools, though at a slower pace than the diversification of the overall population. Whereas roughly 13.6% of law students were students of color¹ in 1990-91, by 2021 that figure had climbed to about 32%. Women, who made up less than 43% of law students in 1990-91, have outnumbered men in law school since 2016 and in 2021 made up 55% of all law students.²

In comparison to these figures, Census Bureau figures from the 1990 Census show that the U.S. population at that time was about 24% non-White or Hispanic/Latinx, considerably more than the 13.6% figure at law schools. By the 2020 Census, the U.S. population was about 40% non-White or Hispanic/Latinx, compared to the 32% figure at law schools. During this same period, the percentage of the U.S. population accounted for by White, non-Hispanic men [hereafter referred to as White men] decreased from about 37% in 1990 to about 32% in 2020. Much of the growth in the non-White or Hispanic/Latinx population has come from the growth in the Hispanic/Latinx population, and to lesser extent the Asian population.³

NALP's individual graduate employment data, which includes a variety of demographic information, allows us to more closely compare general characteristics with more detailed information on law school graduates and the kinds of jobs they take. This column, similar to one in the March 2023 NALP Bulletin+, examines a number of specific job types, looking both at how the presence of White non-Hispanic graduates (hereafter referred to as White graduates) and graduates of color in these jobs has changed over time, and also at the changing make-up of graduates of color, and how that has played out for these jobs.

In the early 1990s, White men comprised a disproportionate percentage of law school graduating classes compared with their representation in the population at large. As noted above, in 1990, White men accounted for 37% of the U.S. population, but at the time they made up over half of all law school graduates, accounting for 51.6% of all graduates in the class of 1991. By the time the Class of 2021 graduated, the share of the class accounted for by White men had decreased to about 34%, more in line with the 32% figure for the population as a whole.⁴

The percentage of jobs of all types obtained by law school graduates who were White men has also changed over the past 30 years, reflecting their representation in the class. The last law school graduating class for which White men obtained over half of the jobs was in 1993. The following two years, 1994 and 1995, the percentage hovered at just about half of jobs, but since then has declined to just over one-third. In fact, in the two most recent years for which ERSS data are available — 2020 and 2021 — the percentages of jobs obtained by White men have been very close to the percentages of jobs obtained by White women, at 34% for White men and 35% for White women in 2021. The figure for White men was the same in 2020 and was about 34.5% for White women.

Meanwhile, the share of jobs obtained by people of color has grown, particularly for women of color, whose share has more than tripled from 5.2% 1991 to 18.7% in 2021. The increase for men of color has lagged behind that of women of color, starting in about the same place, but more than doubling, from 5.3% in 1991 to 12.0% in 2021. The increase for these two groups, in concert with the decline for White men, means that the share of jobs obtained by White women over this period has not changed all that much, ranging from about 33% to 37% of jobs over the period from 1991 - 2021. [Table 1 and Figure 1.]

However, as will be discussed, that growth for graduates of color as whole has not occurred equally for Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian graduates, the three racial/ethnic groups accounting for most of the graduates of color, just as growth has not occurred equally for the country as a whole.⁵

Changes in the Demographics of Jobs

Federal Judicial Clerkships: Both men and women of color have increased their share of federal clerkships, but change has been slow, and, in the case of women, inconsistent. White men last obtained half or more of federal clerkships in 1993, but the figure has been close to half in some years since. White men accounted for just over one-third of the class of 2021 but obtained almost 43% of federal clerkships. The share of federal judicial clerkships obtained by White women has been essentially flat over the years. [Table 1 and Figure 3.]

But drilling down into these overall figures for graduates of color reveals differences among specific racial/ethnic groups. Asian graduates, both men and women, have increased their share of these clerkships, to just over 3% for women and not quite 3% for men. However, the share obtained by Asian women has been notably higher in some prior years, including 2006 and 2016. The share of federal clerkships obtained by Hispanic/Latinx graduates has about doubled for women and tripled for men, with the increases most consistent for men. In contrast, the share of federal clerkships obtained by Black graduates has remained generally flat over the period, typically less than three percent for women, and bouncing between 1.4% and 2.4% for men. [Table 2.]

State and Local Judicial Clerkships: White men and White women obtained equal shares of state judicial clerkships in 1991, which, because of their respective representation in the class at that time, meant that White men obtained a smaller share of state judicial clerkships compared with their representation in the class as a whole while White women obtained a greater share compared with their representation in the class as a whole. More recently, White women have continued to obtain a larger share of state clerkships than their representation in the class as a whole, whereas the figure has decreased considerably for White men, from 45% of these jobs in 1991 to one-third in 2021, about matching their presence in the class in recent years. The pattern is similar for local clerkships, which are far fewer in number.

Graduates of color have made gains at the state and local clerkship level, but again those gains have not always been steady and have been greater for women compared to men, commensurate with changes in the makeup of the class. It is worth noting that men of color obtained about 9% of clerkships, regardless of court type, in 2021, whereas for women of color figures ranged from about 10% for federal clerkships, to about 18% for local clerkships in 2021. [Table 1, Figure 4, and Figure 5.]

Black, Asian, and Hispanic/Latinx graduates were at about the same place in 1991, obtaining 0.9% to 1.6% of state judicial clerkships. Black women were the exception, at just over 3% in 1991; however, their share of jobs has increased only sporadically since then. Hispanic/Latina women have seen the greatest growth, from obtaining less than 1% of these jobs in 1991 to over 5% in 2021, followed by Asian women, who obtained about 1.2% of these jobs in 1991 and 4.2% in 2021. Their male counterparts have increased their share, but not as much and not as consistently. The share of these jobs obtained by Black men has remained essentially flat. Moreover, except for Black women, none of these groups have obtained state judicial clerkships proportionate to their presence in the class. [Table 2.]

Small Firms: Up until 2001, at least half of jobs in firms of one to ten lawyers were obtained by White men and just over one-third by White women. While the exact share obtained by White women has fluctuated somewhat, the net effect has been little change, which means that over time it has converged with the figure for White men, whose share has declined steadily from about 59% in 1991 to almost 37% in 2021. However, even in 2021 White men remain over-represented compared to the class by several percentage points.

The percentage of small firm jobs obtained by graduates of color has also increased, but far more so for women compared with men. The percentage of such jobs obtained by men of color increased from 3.7% to 10.3% from 1991 to 2021. Notably, that 2021 figure for men of color was down a little compared with where it was in 2016, paralleling the decreased presence of men of color in the class as whole, which was slightly lower in 2021 compared with 2016. Percentages for women of color over this same period increased from 2.8% to 16.4% of small firm jobs. [Table 1, Figure 6.]

But comparing Black, Asian and Hispanic/Latinx graduates again reveals that, in general, these groups all started out obtaining roughly the same percentage of these jobs, about 1%, (though it was lower for Asian women (0.46%), and a bit higher for Hispanic/Latino men, at 1.66%) but they have made disparate progress over the intervening thirty years. Since 1991 by far the most growth in share has come among Hispanic/Latina women, much of it in the past ten years, followed by Hispanic/Latino men. By 2021, Hispanic/Latina women obtained almost 8% of jobs in small firms, and Hispanic men obtained almost 5% of these jobs. This is in line with their growing share of employed graduates. In contrast, the share of Black men among employed graduates increased by less than one percentage point between 1991 and 1996 and has been essentially flat since then at about 2.5%. Black men have also consistently been outnumbered by Black women among graduates and their share of jobs in small firms reflect those differences. Moreover, Black men and women accounted for both a smaller share of employed graduates and of jobs obtained in small firms in 2021 compared with 2016. When it comes to Asian graduates, both men and women increased their share of jobs in small firms, again with women obtaining more of these jobs than men since at least 1996, and increasingly so since at least 2001. However, the increases for both Asian men and women are less than proportionate to their increases in the class as a whole. [Table 2.]

Large Firms: Graduates of color have tripled their share of jobs in large firms of 251+ lawyers since 1991, and both men and women of color have at least matched, and generally exceeded, their representation in the class since 1991. However, the growth in the share of women of color has greatly exceeded that of men; the percentages were much closer in 1991, at 5.5% of jobs obtained by women of color and 6.3% obtained by men of color. The gap had widened to seven percentage points by 2021, at 21.4% and 14.4%, respectively. Between 2016 and 2021, men of color did not increase their share of the class [declining a bit as noted earlier] or their share of the jobs in large firms. White men have generally been under-represented in these jobs by one or two percentage points, as have White women in most years since at least 2001. [Table 1, Figure 7.]

Comparing Black, Asian and Hispanic/Latinx graduates, all, except Hispanic/Latina women, started out at about the same place — obtaining about 2% of jobs in large firms in 1991. Since then, representation has increased for all groups except Black men, whose share has been essentially flat since 1996, hovering in the two to three percent range. The share of large firm jobs obtained by Black women has about doubled since 1991, however, like Black men, their share has changed little in the 25-year period from 1996 to 2021. These figures for Black graduates generally track with their representation among graduates. Gains are most notable for Asian women, who have consistently obtained a larger share of large firm jobs compared with their overall share in the class, and who in 2021 obtained almost one in ten of these jobs. Hispanic/Latinx graduates, particularly women, have also experienced growth in share of large firm jobs they've obtained, but that growth still lags behind their representation in the class as a whole. [Table 2.]

Changes in the Composition of Graduates of Color

As noted above, the share of jobs obtained by graduates of color has almost tripled; however, that growth has not occurred equally for Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian graduates, the three racial/ethnic groups accounting for most of the graduates of color. In 1991, over 40% of employed graduates of color were Black; by 2021 the figure had fallen to less than a quarter, with the loss of Black males' share relatively larger compared with the loss of share for Black females. Meanwhile, the share of Asian and Hispanic/Latina women increased, while figures for men in these groups decreased overall. [Note that reporting of multi-racial graduates has increased considerably over this period.] In the larger context of the population, there have been similar shifts. In 1990, almost half (48%) of the Hispanic/Latinx and non-White population was Black; by 2020 that percentage had fallen to less than one-third or 31%. Conversely, the Hispanic/Latinx share of the that population grew from about 37% in 1990 to about 46% in 2020. The share accounted for by Asian people changed relatively little — from 11.5% to 14.5%. These changes in the makeup of the non-White or Hispanic/Latinx population as a whole, and in the law school graduate population, provide some additional nuance to findings for specific job types. [Figure 2 and Table 3.] For example, and keeping in mind that these figures use as their base just graduates of color:

• The distribution graduates of color obtaining federal clerkships has shifted away from Black graduates, whose share was cut in half from 1991 to 2021, decreasing from 52% to 25%, and towards Asian graduates and Hispanic/Latino men.
• Among graduates of color obtaining state judicial clerkships, again we see the share of Black graduates obtaining these jobs cut in half-from 49% to 25%. By comparison, the share changed little for Asian graduates and increased for Hispanic/Latinx graduates. About one-third of the graduates of color taking these jobs in 2021 were Hispanic/Latinx, up from about one-quarter in 1991. Most of that change has been driven by Hispanic/Latinx women.
• For graduates of color obtaining jobs in small firms, in 1991 Black graduates accounted for just under one-third of the graduates of color obtaining such jobs; by 2021 that figure had decreased to about 15%. By contrast, over this same period, the percentage of graduates of color obtaining such jobs who were Asian remained consistent, at just under one-quarter in 1991 and 2021. However, figures for Asian men and Asian women essentially reversed. Almost half of the graduates of color obtaining these jobs in 2021 were Hispanic/Latinx, increasing their share from about 39% in 1991.
• At large firms, the share of Black graduates among all graduates of color obtaining these jobs in 2021 was cut in half compared to 1991, from 38% to 21%. Asian and Hispanic/Latina women made gains in share, whereas their male counterparts did not.

These shifts also reinforce the fact that, though absolute numbers of graduates of color [as reported on NALP's Employment and Salary Survey] have increased for all three of the groups studied here, the rates of growth have been wildly disparate. For example, the number of Black female graduates who were employed has about doubled from 1991 to 2021, while the number of Black men increased by just 50%. In contrast, the number of Asian and Hispanic/Latina women approximately quintupled. The number of Asian and Hispanic/Latino men was up by about 175%, so somewhat short of tripling.

In Conclusion

Law school graduates are increasingly people of color, about 35% in 2021 compared with just 12% percent in 1991, just as the population as a whole is increasingly of color. It follows that jobs are increasingly obtained by law school graduates of color. However, whereas the share of graduates overall and of employed graduates accounted for by women of color has increased steadily, this is not the case for men of color. Though their share of graduates as a whole and of employed graduates has about doubled over the 1991-2021 period, it was flat in 2021 compared with 2016. Among the job types examined here, the share of jobs obtained by men of color in both small firms and large firms was essentially flat in 2021 compared with 2016. And though women of color increased their share of jobs steadily over the period for most of the job types examined here, this was not true of federal judicial clerkships in 2021 as compared to 2016. The share of jobs obtained by White men has declined by about 19 percentage points overall, commensurate with the 18-percentage point decline among graduates as a whole. The decline was even greater in small firms, but notably less for federal clerkships, where White men continue to be over-represented.

It is also the case that the makeup of the Hispanic/Latinx or non-White population in the U.S. has changed over the past several decades, with Asian and Hispanic/Latinx individuals now accounting for a larger portion of the non-White or Hispanic/Latinx population than was the case in 1990. This same shift is also evident among law school graduates. But looking at specific racial/ethnic groups and gender together reveals that Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Black men all account for a smaller proportion of graduates of color in 2021 than was the case in 1991 and the decline was particularly steep among Black men. Black women also saw a decline, though not as great. Asian and Hispanic/Latina women, in contrast have grown their representation among graduates of color. These disparate rates of change are reflected in job demographics, with Asian and Hispanic/Latina women showing the largest gains, notably in state judicial clerkships and law firm jobs. In contrast the share of jobs overall obtained by Black male graduates has been essentially flat since 1996 and was lower in 2021 compared with 2016. In some cases, such as state judicial clerkships and jobs in law firms, the share of jobs in 2021 is about the same as in 1996.

The findings presented here are in line with the jobs studied in the previous column on this topic. Indeed, the pattern is even more pronounced for some of those jobs. To cite just one example, the share of civil legal services jobs obtained by Hispanic/Latina women increased from not quite 4% in 1991 to almost 15% in 2021; the share of these jobs obtained by Black men dropped from 3.5% to less than 2% over the same period.

Notes

1. Defined as individuals whose race is other than White, or who are Hispanic/Latinx and of any race. Both "of color" and "non-White or Hispanic/Latinx" are used here.

2. ABA Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar - First Year and Total JD Minority
ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2022
The ABA follows standard categories for reporting race/ethnicity.
The ABA also has a "foreign national" category, described as: "A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely. Note: Nonresident aliens are to be reported separately in the places provided, rather than in any of the racial/ethnic categories described above."

3. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Sex, Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021 (NC-EST2021-ASR6H)

Census 2000 PHC-T-1. Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 1990 and 2000

Resident Population Estimates of the United States by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: April 1, 1990 to July 1, 1999, with Short-Term Projection to November 1, 2000

4. Figures for 1991 are based on graduates for whom both race/ethnicity and gender were reported — about 81% of the class. Figures for 2021 are based on graduates for whom both race/ethnicity and gender were reported — about 88% of the class

5. The presence of Native Americans among law school graduates remains at less than 1%, even accounting for those who were reported as Native American in combination with another race. For specific kinds of jobs, this translates into small job counts among those who are employed.

Demographic Profile of Graduates Obtaining Selected Job Types — 1991-2021
(percentage of jobs obtained by each demographic group)

*Jobs for which both gender and race/ethnicity of the graduate were reported. Percentages may not add to 100 for 2016 and 2021 as job counts can include graduates who do not identify as either male or female.
**Graduates for whom both gender and race/ethnicity reported. Percentages may not add to 100.0 for 2016 and 2021 as graduate counts include graduates who did not identify as either male or female.
Note: 2021 figures for men include transgender men; 2021 figures for women include transgender women.

Table 2. Demographics Profile of Graduates Obtaining Selected Job Types — 1991-2021
(percentage of each type of job obtained by Asian, Black, and Hispanic/Latinx graduates)

Note: Figures based on jobs for which both gender and race/ethnicity were reported. For 2016 and 2021, this includes a small number of graduates reported as not identifying as either male or female. 

Figures for Asian/Pacific Islanders include graduates reported as East Indian/Pakistani or Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander for years in which those categories were in use. Figures for Hispanics/Latinx include graduates who were reported as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Latino for years in which those categories were in use. 2021 figures for men include transgender men. 2021 figures for women include transgender women. Not all the job categories in this table included transgender or non-binary graduates in 2016 or 2021.

Table 3. Graduates of Color Obtaining Selected Job Types — 1991and 2021
(distribution by race/ethnicity and gender)

Green indicates highest figures for the year and job type; red indicates lowest figures (excluding the 'other' category) for the year and job type.

Note: Jobs for which both gender and race/ethnicity were reported. Figures for Asian/Pacific Islanders include graduates reported as East Indian/Pakistani or Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander for years in which those categories were in use. Figures for Hispanics include graduates who were reported as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Latino for years in which those categories were in use. 2021 figures for men include trans men. 2021 figures for women include trans women. 

The "other" category includes Native American and multiracial graduates.

Figure 1. Demographics of Employed Graduates Percentage of Jobs Obtained, by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Figure 2. Distribution of Employed Graduates of Color by Race and Ethnicity

Note: Other includes Native American and multi-racial graduates. In 2021 other includes graduates not identifying as either male or female.

Figure 3. Demographics of Graduates Obtaining Federal Judicial Clerkships, Percentage of Jobs Obtained by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Figure 4. Demographics of Graduates Obtaining State Judicial Clerkships, Percentage of Jobs Obtained by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Figure 5. Demographics of Graduates Obtaining Local Judicial Clerkships, Percentage of Jobs Obtained by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Figure 6. Demographics of Graduates Obtaining Jobs in Small Firms of 1-10, Percentage of Jobs Obtained by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Figure 7. Demographics of Graduates Obtaining Jobs in Firms of 251+ Percentage of Jobs Obtained by Minority Status and Gender — Selected Years — 1991-2021

Judith N. Collins (jcollins@nalp.org) is NALP's Senior Research Associate for Special Projects and former Director of Research.