Atinuke (Tinu) Adediran, David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor in Business Law at Boston College Law School, will present her paper, “Public Interest Law Leadership—So White.”

Abstract

The public interest law sector provides legal services and engages in law reform efforts that impact poor people who are disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, those who manage the institutions within the sector—executive directors, boards of directors, and law firm pro bono partners and counsels—who control policies, strategies, and make decisions that impact communities of color, are mostly White. This article presents the first national data of executive directors and board members of nonprofit legal services organizations, and pro bono partners and counsels in large firms, and interview data of a subset of these groups. The Article starts the conversation about the lack of diversity among the leaders in the sector.

Increasing racial and ethnic diversity in public interest law leadership is crucial because public interest law leaders determine among other things, the lawyers who provide legal services to clients, and the kinds of legal services or law reform efforts provided. I consider several plausible reasons for why public interest law leadership lacks racial and ethnic diversity, including whether there is a pipeline problem, the impact of low wages on retention, the lack of diversity in large law firms, homophily, and the impact of implicit bias. I then propose policy considerations that can tackle some of the reasons why racial diversity is lacking, including integrating racial justice into antipoverty law.

Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.

CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.

About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.