California’s legal profession still falls short on diversity
When the scales of justice are swinging, Nicole Jaffee knows how to pick her battles — and win.
The Santa Rosa attorney with Perry, Johnson, Anderson, Miller & Moskowitz, treats her courtroom like a life’s experience — with the nurturing of a mother of two but also with an intensity of a “Mama Bear.”
“I love what I do, especially being a litigator. I’m the only woman in the courtroom a lot of times, and as a woman, they assume you go into family law,” she said. “Don’t try to make me something that I’m not.”
It was as though she was channeling the notorious RBG, as in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Much like Ginsburg, this half-white, half-black woman ignored statistics of how few women enter the field of law. After completing her 12th year in the legal profession, Jaffee, 41, may ponder whether her pioneering spirit has paid off for other women in the field.
The findings from a State Bar new study “Report Card on the Diversity of California’s Legal Profession” suggests otherwise. The 2019 report released July 20 found, even with some improvements, diversity still falls short.
With women now comprising 42% of attorneys in California female lawyers still lag behind men at making partner. The study showed that only 21% made partner.
The numbers decrease to 15% and 8%, when the study threw in men and women of color who became partners, respectively.
Moreover, female attorneys tend to be more prominent in nonprofits and government jobs, which only makes up 17% of the positions in the profession opposed to private practice.
Like women, people of color gravitate toward these legal positions as well. Nonprofits tend to bring out the most diverse in these types of law, comprising only 20% white men versus a whopping 68% of women in the field and 44% consisting of people of color.
Overall, Latinos, who make up over a third of California’s population, account for a mere 7% of active attorneys.
While only 40% of the Golden State’s population of 39.51 million identify as white and the remainder as people of color, the study points out these statistics flop when figuring those who practice law — 68% white versus 32% people of color.
It’s one reason that, long before this summer’s U.S. reckoning with racial inequality, the Sonoma County Bar Association started a “Diversity & Inclusion” section, of which Jaffee serves on the board of.
Fixing disparities and demanding equal treatment is right up Jaffee’s alley.
She recalls attending Mission High School in San Francisco and walking in a calculus class, only to be told by the teacher “you’re not supposed to be here,” she said. Jaffee evaluated the teacher over the duration of the class and watched as other people of color walked out. She was determined to rectify this watershed moment at some point in her life.
“I don’t want others to feel this way. Anybody can be a lawyer,” she said.
The county bar association’s Diversity & Inclusion committee was preparing to reach out to more prospects in the younger sects in high schools, “then COVID-(19) hit,” she said.
The interest in motivating youth was heightened with a growing level of activism seen from the age group in gun control, civil rights and environmental movements.
“Sonoma County is such an interesting place. It doesn’t compute. There’s a huge disparity of diversity in the community and diversity in the (legal) profession — even paralegals and secretaries,” she said. “Things are changing but very slowly. The problem is, if you don’t see people like you in the courtroom, you won’t be thinking about going into law.”
The hurdles abound, even after a legal eagle of diversity goes into the line of work.
Jaffee remembered sitting down with a client, asking questions and providing counsel — only to hear: “You’re an attorney, aren’t you?”
The times are changin’
Rachel Dollar, who entered the legal profession as a secretary before becoming a paralegal then attorney 20 years ago, could attest to the importance of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps to break the norms.
Blowing the theory that less than a quarter of the women in law become partner, Dollar, 52, launched her Santa Rosa law practice, Smith Dollar, in 2005. She brought her husband Glenn Smith in the firm two years later, after having met him at another North Bay practice.
“When you look at it, (decades ago) women didn’t go to law school. People of color didn’t go to law school. But in 2018, women made up 56% of law students,” she said. “It will improve as time goes on.”
Dollar said she’s encouraged by the number of women in the profession rising in the last half century. For example, at the time when RBG attended Harvard Law School in the mid 1950s as only one in eight women in a class of 500, her husband Martin played a pivotal role in urging to pursue her dreams.
