Law Firm Diversity Benchmark Faces Uncertain Future, 35 Years In

A longtime source of information on diversity in the legal industry may look very different next year after many law firms declined to share their demographic data.

Nearly one-third fewer law offices provided demographic data this year to the National Association for Law Placement for its annual diversity report. The drop came as the Trump administration put diversity programs at the center of its attacks on law firms.

“It’s still legal to collect this information, it’s still legal to disclose this information,” Nikia Gray, NALP’s executive director, said in an interview. “But, of course, I can appreciate the concerns that the firms have.”

NALP will offer to make the data anonymous moving forward to try to boost response rates, according to Gray. That means law students vetting potential employers and other researchers won’t get to see complete firm-by-firm demographic data.

The Trump administration has railed against diversity recruiting programs used by a wide range of employers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year launched inquiries into 20 large firms, an effort ordered by Trump that resulted in some firms striking deals with the White House, before the probes were dropped in the face of a lawsuit.

The non-profit Diversity Lab in February paused its Mansfield Rule, which encourages hiring and retention of more minorities in the legal profession. The move came shortly after Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent letters to more than 40 Big Law firms warning them that their participation in the effort could violate antitrust laws.

NALP did not disclose which firms declined to provide it with demographic data. Its report states that the steepest drop from 2024 in response rates came from the largest firms, those with more than 700 attorneys.

Even with the limited amount of data NALP was able to collect for 2025, there are signs the profession is backsliding after years of slow progress toward greater diversity. More than 30 percent of law firm associates last year were people of color, a slight tick down from the previous year and the first decline since 2010. The percentage of Black partners at law firms also decreased for the first time since 2014.

Gray said now would be a particularly bad time to lose insight into the demographics of the legal profession: Next year’s summer associates will be from the first law school class admitted after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision striking down affirmative action on campuses.

“It would be tragic,” she said. “We really want to understand what happens with them.”

NALP has been putting out the report for 35 years, based on data law firms submit to it to be included in its Directory of Legal Employers. Firms’ decisions to withhold that data or keep it private doesn’t just hurt NALP’s ability to write its report; it also makes it harder for new law school grads to decide where to work, Gray said.

“Students are looking for jobs, they want to know that information,” she said. “They want to know that they are represented.”

Gray said she’s not confident that allowing firms to submit data confidentially will fix the problem. She’s heard from some firms that “there’s still some reluctance even to provide that information confidentially to other organizations,” she said.

“It’s something I don’t think the firms thought about because I know they all use the survey for benchmarking,” Gray added."But I don’t think they realized if they don’t provide us the data, we can’t give that to them.”