Black lawyers on Bay Street – Are we being overlooked

BY NANA ADJIE-POKU

Back in 2017, there was an article written in the Globe & Mail involving lawyer Hadiya Roderique and the micro aggressions she was facing while working as an employment lawyer at the law firm Faskens. This was a job she landed right out of law school. In the article, she spoke about struggling to fit into the “Upper-class white world” and that “Big law firms could not accommodate the person and colour she was.” Needless to say, this article made some noise in the big law firms.  What Ms. Roderique wrote about; many were speaking about in their private conversations.

When you speak with some of the black lawyers, many will tell you that they have been mistaken for assistants as opposed to lawyers. Many have not been included in workplace events compared to their white counterparts.

A lot of these firms speak about diversity and inclusion, yet research shows otherwise.  In 2016, 19.3% of the province’s lawyers identified as being racialized.

For this most recent analysis, Globe and Mail corresponded with twenty law firms.  Some of these firms were: Blakes, Davies, Goodmans, McCarthy Tetrault, Oslers, Stikeman and Torys. When queried about the percentages of black or racialized lawyers, some firms would not provide the percentage due to, as they put it, privacy concerns. Five of the firms did provide data on black lawyers including the number of black partners.  The other top firms advised that they did not collect the info or did not want to share it publicly.

Of the findings, black lawyers who were partners represented approximately 35 out of 4,000 partners. Firms McCarthy Tetrault, Fasken, Goodmans, Dentons and Aird & Berlis reported that 2% of their 700 lawyers were black. This percent also included articling students and partners. Some of the black lawyers who were approached asked to remain anonymous due to fear that any opinions or comments would impact their careers. Of the twenty firms mentioned the following five firms had the highest percentage of partners who racialized.

• Miller Thomson – 23.6%
• Gowlings – 19%
• Dentons-17% includes articling students
• Torys – 16%
• McCarthy Tetrault – 13%

31% of black lawyers have been found to work as sole practitioners as opposed to being found inside the big firms, while you find that 19% of their white counterparts were doing the same. The reason for such a high percentage may be due to the fact that many were unable to land careers in the big Bay Street firms.

Now when it comes to schooling, black students were more represented at York University’s Osgoode Hall at a rate of 8%, other visible minorities were at a rate of 35% compared to 49% white students.  At University of Toronto and Queens University the rate is: 1% black, 42% other visible minority and 53% white. One explanation for this may be the fact that many black/racialized students are coming from low income households where law school is way out of their range of affordability.

The hiring process was noted to be a difficult one for blacks. If your name came across as being black or racialized, you had less of a chance of receiving a call for an interview. This could be a process next to none. Research was done in 2016 and revealed that students who “whitened” their name had a 2.5% more chance at receiving a call back for an interview.

Another area of concern is the rate of pay black lawyers receive.  A white lawyer makes an average of $12,000 more than blacks, indigenous and LGBTQ lawyers.

Black female lawyers have it worse due to their race and gender. Current President of the Canadian Bar Association Vivene Salmon recalled one incident where she attended a meeting with a group all white male lawyers and was asked to serve coffee. She stated that that this shows blacks are not considered equal.

Now with the recent George Floyd incident, some of the Bay Street firms have been revisiting the whole diversity and inclusion area and have made public statements on their plans to hire more lawyers from diverse backgrounds. Some of these firms have acknowledged the fact that they haven’t done well in terms of the retention of lawyers from racialized backgrounds.

I mean, this is a start, although it should have been recognized years ago back when the original Globe & Mail article was released, or even way before that. Most recently, firms Norton Rose, Stikeman Elliott and Bennett Jones have made a pledge to improve the representation of blacks in their boardrooms. Some of them include, but not limited to, hiring at least 5% students and employing black or visible minorities in 3.5% of senior roles by 2025.

Some suggestions by Ms. Roderique were to: eliminate the mystery of the interview process, make recruiting and retention more objective by removing names from resumes, and use standardized questioning in the process so that it is fair and doesn’t leave racialized prospects feeling less than equal.