‘We will not stay silent and sit idly by’

A year on from the murder of George Floyd, Jennifer Salinas, executive director, global litigation, Lenovo, explores why it is vital for the legal sector to learn the lessons of the past and address its historic lack of diversity.

As a Latina lawyer, I am acutely aware that there are not enough attorneys who “look like me” in the profession. Industry statistics show that diverse attorney representation lags significantly behind their non-diverse counterparts. According to the American Bar Association’s National Lawyer Population Survey in 2020, Hispanics comprise 5% of all attorneys, African Americans 5%, Asians 2%, and other ethnic minorities make up 2%.

By contrast, white attorneys account for 86% of all lawyers in the US, a country where Latinos are conservatively estimated to account for 18% of the population, African Americans 13%, and Asians over 5%.

The lack of proportional representation in the legal profession is both glaringly obvious and fundamentally wrong, and it has been magnified by tragic events which have shaken our beliefs in the existence of fairness, equality and an equitable justice system.