I was watching the local news coverage of unionized hotel workers and their possible strike/lock-out, when I noticed the demographics of those workers. They looked a lot like the demographics of temporary attorneys.
In the last year, I have taken temporary attorney work. In theory, it’s a great way to supplement my income and keep my toe in the water while I pursue that entertainment career.
When I was in law school, I looked around at the members of my class often — after all what was one to do during those dry classes — and I noticed that about two thirds of our class was male, and our class was mostly white with a sprinkling of african-americans, asians, latinos, and one native american woman.
On job interviews for ‘legal’ employment, however, ninety-nine percent of the attorneys and interviewers were white men. Sure there was an occasional woman attorney — and I never saw those minority attorneys they touted in statistics.
So, I always wondered — where did the white women and racial minority attorneys disappear to? Clearly, we were sitting together in class, but I didn’t see their numbers represented in the mainstream legal employers.
My first thought was that we primarily were slotted into public interest firms. Interviewing with large public interest employers like the ACLU and legal aid dispelled that notion. Those were as white and male as their privately employed white shoe counterparts. Maybe, government, I thought. Interviews there showed a better minority representation, but not enough folks to justify the gap. Then, I entered the world of temporary employment.
As I sit in meetings for my latest project — I think I’ve finally come upon the answer. To work on this large scale legal project — the law firm has hired twenty attorneys — of whom two are white and male. The rest are all the people I haven’t seen for years. There we are working for a quarter of the pay of the attorneys who are supervising the team.
Meeting after meeting, the law firm’s best and brightest explain all the ‘difficult’ concepts to us and I’m amazed at how things have shaken out.
Now, I know where we went.
