Several times a year, a Denver-based organization called the Center for Legal Inclusiveness (CLI) sifts through the latest data reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  They then use those stats to compile a comparative list of American professions, ranked according to their diversity.

Kathleen Nalty, an esteemed civil rights attorney who serves as the CLI’s executive director, sent me a copy of the organization’s most recent report, from December 2010:

What’s so disappointing about Law’s place in the cellar is that our profession has actually made modest strides in recruiting a more diverse workforce in recent years. But that’s only half the battle. It’s what happens next to those lawyers that puts us at or near the bottom of such surveys.

“We are just terrible at retention,” Nalty says, citing recent National Association for Law Placement (NALP) data that show 87% of racially or ethnically diverse law firm associates leave by their fifth year—a downward trend that also affects the dwindling number of minorities (and women) who make Partner. Legal organizations must step up their investment in creating a culture of inclusiveness, by making structural changes that remove hidden barriers and consistently provide opportunities for these young lawyers to advance in their careers. If not, “absolutely nothing will change,” says Nalty, “and the legal profession will remain in last place.”

Making that investment won’t be easy.  Steeped in caution, the legal profession is notoriously risk-averse, slow to adjust to new realities or dismantle outmoded structures that marginalize attorneys of diverse backgrounds.  We are trained to deal in worst-case scenarios, and avoid uncertain outcomes.  The unfamiliar makes us nervous.

“It’s all too easy for members of our profession to simply pay lip service to this issue,” says Jeff Gearhart of Walmart, the LCLD Board member who first brought the CLI survey to my attention—“and then continue doing what we’ve always done, which is very little.”

That’s not good enough.

Which is why LCLD has made changing the legal zeitgeist one of the strategic pillars of our organization.  Led by Michele Mayes (below), General Counsel of Allstate, our Partnerships & Teams initiative aims to create a culture of inclusion within Member organizations that will enrich, mentor, retain, and ultimately propel diverse young attorneys towards the very top of our profession.  The need is urgent, Mayes said recently, “so that my tenure as a female general counsel of color is not a passing blip on the radar screen.”

We hope to accomplish this through a combination of leadership and action, building meaningful partnerships among LCLD law firms and their clients—and forging diverse teams within the law firms and corporate legal departments of LCLD member organizations. That’s the kind of commitment our Members make when they sign on, and strive to fulfill in the professional relationships that matter the most.

For the next year, Mayes and her colleagues will be working to create systematic, real-world opportunities for the diverse young attorneys our profession has attracted, the “high-value touches” that help them realize their potential and set them on the path to leadership. Ultimately, of course, our goal is to bring out the very best in our profession—and get those diversity numbers moving in the right direction.

Finally, Donald Trump and his birth certificate/college transcript sideshow have been pushed off the front pages, although it took nothing less than the death of Osama bin Laden to do it. Before too much time passes, however, I’d like to consider what the “birtherism” espoused by Trump (and shared by a quarter of the U.S. electorate, according to polls) suggests about the challenge of making America a more just and inclusive society.

The fact that Trump was able to stir up so much controversy—and draw such prolonged attention from the national news media—suggests to me that all this talk about birth certificates was actually a sideways discussion of race in America.

For political advantage, Trump exposed—some would say, exploited—a raw nerve in our collective psyche that many Americans of all political persuasions had hoped was healed by now. That nerve is unconscious bias, a source of subtle but powerful discrimination that many of us, with our modern aversion to talking about race, might not even be aware of. But I think one reason we can’t take our eyes off Trump is that he’s breaking a taboo to say, in his uniquely vulgar way, what millions of Americans secretly fear: If a black man has been elevated to the most powerful office in the land, then something must be wrong. There’s “something fishy” about this guy, Trump proclaims. Let’s see his papers.

“The birther controversy is further evidence of the uphill road that even the best qualified African Americans have always had to traverse,” writes David O. Sears, Professor of Psychology and Political Science at UCLA and co-author of Obama’s Race: The Election of 2008 and the Dream of a Post-Racial America.

According to Sears, the last presidential election brought an unprecedented number of “racial resentments” to the surface. Even though he won, “everything associated with Obama became racialized.”

For Goldie Taylor, an editor at thegrio.com, the birther phenomenon has roots in the Jim Crow South of the 19th century. As Taylor relates in the video below, Trump’s attacks on Obama, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law and editor of the Harvard Law Review, reminds her of what happened to her great-great-grandfather, Major Blackard, who was arrested in St. Louis for failure to produce his “papers.” See Goldie Taylor’s interview here:

A lot has changed since 1899. After decades of struggle for civil rights, overt bias is against the law today. But unconscious bias, equally destructive, lives on in the shadows of our inner selves.

Such bias is not just applied to black Americans, of course. It’s society’s default position towards anyone who’s different—whether a woman, a Muslim, an Asian American, a Latino, a gay or lesbian, a man in a wheelchair, or, as Obama once described himself, a “skinny black kid with a funny name.” This is the “uphill road” that Dr. Sears refers to, which LCLD is helping to level for the good of us all.

Given enough time and proof to the contrary, we believe that the United States, and its legal profession, must evolve beyond the irrational fears and biases of the past into a more diverse and inclusive society. America elected a black president, after all—
a huge step forward.

But as the Donald recently showed us, bias, unconscious or not, still gets great ratings.

Last Thursday the U.S. Census Bureau released a comprehensive, state-by-state snapshot of the United States that captures the demographic makeup of our country in 2010.

It confirms what our eyes have been telling us for some time now. The face of America is changing, and fast.

Here are some highlights: 

One in seven Americans is now Hispanic, one in 20 is Asian, and the minority population is growing in virtually every state of the U.S. 

Between 2000 and 2010, Asians increased by 43 percent, making them the fastest growing minority in the country. 

Yet more than half of all population growth in the U.S. over the past decade came from Hispanics, a trend that is sure to continue since nearly a quarter of all children age 17 or younger are Latino. Numbering more than 50 million, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the country, about 16.3 percent of the population. 

While non-Hispanic whites still make up more than half the U.S. population—and blacks about 12.3 percent—these “new” minorities account for more than 70 percent of the population increase from 2000 to 2010. The United States, with diversity coded into its DNA, is becoming ever more diverse.

[To see the U.S. county by county, visit this interactive map from the New York Times.]

These changes are being felt, of course, at every level of society, stretching the social, economic, and political fabric of the nation, sometimes to the breaking point. It’s also making the U.S. a richer, more colorful nation. 

But the rapidly increasing diversity of 21st century America makes it even more imperative that the institutions of this country, including its legal system, find ways to more fully reflect the 308 million people who live here. 

The American legal profession has an especially long way to go. 

According to the most recent ABA surveys, whites still make up more than 90 percent of the partners at U.S. law firms. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks are all stuck in the single digits, while women—who represent half the population and 30 percent of all lawyers—account for just 16.8 percent of the partners in major law firms. 

The reasons for this are complex, ranging from a history of discrimination and biases in the U.S. education system to the recruitment and retention policies at major law firms and corporations. A bad economy has made matters worse.

These obstacles are formidable, which is why LCLD was founded in 2009 to address them, and to provide leadership in America’s march towards a more diverse and representative society. Clearly, the time has come to do more. 

As the 2010 census shows, the United States is more diverse now than ever. And as the face of the nation changes, the legal profession must do the same or risk becoming an anachronism, closed off and isolated, out of touch with the multicolored parade of Americans moving past in the streets outside, beyond their thick mahogany doors.

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a whole new America out there. 

I remember the first national lawyers meeting I ever attended, for young attorneys of the American Bar Association. The event was in Boston during the late 1970s, and I was a young up-and-comer from Richmond, Virginia, flush with success as an officer of my state bar association and eager to make a good impression at the highest echelons of the legal profession.

As I walked into the welcome reception, I remember scanning the crowd for familiar faces, and seeing the usual monochromatic sea of white males in power suits. I saw very few women, which is about what I expected, and no lawyers of color other than one black colleague and the guy in the mirror. Back then, that was normal. Par for the course.

Fast forward to 2011. I’ve just returned from New York, and another meeting of high-powered young attorneys, some of the brightest minds in our profession. Yet this time the faces in the crowd were a true reflection of 21st century America: black, brown, and white; male and female; gay and straight; Asian, Latin, Caucasian, African, Middle Eastern. When I walked into that room, my heart soared.

This wasn’t an ABA convention, but the inaugural meeting of the LCLD Fellows—a group of more than a hundred distinguished young lawyers of diverse backgrounds who have excelled at LCLD member law firms and corporations. Chosen for their impact and potential, the Fellows represent one of LCLD’s most important initiatives for 2011—a pro-active, hands-on professional development program to address a shocking lack of diversity at the Partner or GC level in U.S. law firms and corporations.

Led by Greg Jordan of Reed Smith and Geoff Kelly of Coca Cola, chairman and vice chairman of LCLD’s Talent Development Committee, the Fellows program is committed to helping these inspired young attorneys move into positions of real leadership in their organizations.

We’ll do that by putting them in the path of people who can teach them, advance their careers, and help them to embody the excellence in diversity that LCLD stands for. We’ll also be giving them an extraordinary amount of high-value information, starting with the two solid days of seminars and workshops just completed, under the direction of Werten Bellamy.

But the most important gift they’ll receive, and pass along to others, is good old-fashioned mentoring.

“Make no mistake about it: This is a personal investment that we’re making in you,” Greg Jordan said during one of the seminars. “And in return, we’ll be asking you to make a personal investment in those who come behind you.”

Samaa Haridi of Crowell & Moring (standing) brainstorms with colleagues at the first-ever meeting of the LCLD Fellows.

Other speakers, such as Peter Engstrom of Baker McKenzie, emphasized the value of those relationships in an increasingly globalized world, where diversity is a distinct competitive advantage.

“That’s absolutely right,” said Samaa Haridi, a young woman of Egyptian descent, educated in France, who handles international commercial disputes for Crowell & Moring LLP. “It’s only been two days, but I’ve already met colleagues who are involved in the same issues I am, and have expressed interest in having our firm help on international cases. These relationships are going to be invaluable.”

Our ultimate goal, of course, is to create a new, more diverse generation of leaders in the American legal profession, both now and in the future.

At one point, one of our speakers, Sharon Abrams of Procter & Gamble, looked out at the audience of young LCLD Fellows—racially and ethnically diverse, half women, half men—and made a telling observation. “This room,” she said, “looks the way our profession should look.”

We couldn’t agree with you more, Sharon. And we’re working on it.

Human rights. Justice. Opportunity. Freedom.

These democratic ideals, so central to America’s civil rights struggle of the 1960′s, are again pushing against the unbearable status quo, forcing the gates of oppression to open wide enough for millions of human beings to pass through.

This time the demonstrators are marching on the streets of Cairo and Benghazi instead of Selma, Alabama and the two-lane highways of Mississippi. But the protestors’ goals, and the violence of their adversaries, would surely be familiar to Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders of the American civil rights movement. In fact, the peaceful non-violence of the Egypt demonstrations was right out of Dr. King’s playbook.

But imagine trying to explain the tools of this revolution—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, cell phones, the internet—to a visitor from the 1960′s, whose own revolution, beginning in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education and ending, partially, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, raced along at what was considered the breakneck pace of network television, captured in grainy, black-and-white footage on the evening news.

In contrast, Egypt’s revolution—launched by a generation raised on technology, wireless communications, and the power of global community—took less than three weeks.

When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11, President Obama observed that “it was the moral force of non-violence . . . that bent the arc of history toward justice once more. And while the sights and sounds we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history.”

Those echoes—of fire hoses, angry mobs, the march on Washington—are the sounds of history’s arc being bent. And they remind us that advancing the cause of women and minorities in society is not just a practical issue. It’s a moral imperative.

That’s why, when the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity was founded in 2009, we committed ourselves to solidifying and advancing the gains made by women and minorities in the legal profession over the past five decades.

Today, using the same social media tools that Egyptians used to rewrite their history, we have the potential to reach a wider audience, expand and inspire our membership, and build a better, more inclusive legal profession in the United States.

With the launch of OPEN Minded, I invite you to join me and other LCLD members in creating a vibrant, energetic, deeply committed community based on our shared belief in the moral power of inclusion. To keep you informed on diversity issues—and to solicit your ideas—I’ll be posting regular updates to this blog, and inviting your comments. I urge you to share it with others, using whatever media is most convenient.

We’ve also launched an LCLD Facebook page to reach new audiences with our message of excellence and diversity. Facebook users can find us here. Check in regularly for status updates and new postings, and don’t forget to Like us and share us with Friends.

I’ll also be updating followers on my Twitter feed, sharing diversity-related insights and links that cross my screen. Again, I welcome your thoughts and reactions, and urge you to retweet whatever strikes you as worthwhile to your own friends and followers.

Like the pioneers of the U.S. civil rights movement, LCLD is passionate about making this a better, more inclusive world. And like the people of Egypt and Bahrain and Iran, we’re using every tool at our disposal to surge forward, communicate with the public, draw strength from one another, and apply our collective moral force to bending the arc of history a little further.

These days the sound it makes may be subtle—the click of a mouse, the touch of a key, the chime of an incoming message—but it’s bending towards justice all the same.