E X E C U T I V E
D I R E C T O R ’ S
M E S S A G E
J o h n F. K y n e s - H i l l s b o r o u g h C o u n t y B a r A s s o c i a t i o n
aba’s enlightening 2019 Profile
of the legal Profession
“it’s really distressing that the percentage of women equity partners
has barely budged over the [past] decade.”
T
— roberta liebenberg, former Chair,
aba Commission on Women in the Profession
he American Bar
Association recently
published a note -
worthy report on the
current state of the
legal profession.
The “ABA Profile of the Legal
is
a
100-page
Profession”
compendium of legal statistics
and trends, and it provides a
useful — albeit sometimes glaring
— snapshot of the profession.
It includes sections on
demographics, wages, law schools,
pro bono work, women in the
profession, legal technology, and
lawyer well-being.
Released in conjunction with
the ABA’s 2019 Annual Meeting in San Francisco
last August, then-ABA President Bob Carlson said the
first-of-its-kind report is “valuable for anyone who wants
to understand where the legal profession came from and
where it stands today.”
In remarks preceding a special
panel discussion about the report,
Carlson talked about the
“extraordinary transformation” of
the legal profession over the years.
He highlighted the progress the
legal profession has shown in
many areas, such as on diversity
issues, but he conceded, “the legal
profession evolves very slowly.”
Carlson noted that when he
first became a lawyer in 1979,
there were about 500,000 lawyers
in the U.S., and only 1 in 12 were
women.
And today, he said, there are
more than 1.3 million lawyers
nationally, and more than a third
of lawyers are women.
As an aside, the Florida Bar reports there are currently
more than 106,000 lawyers in Florida.
Continued on page 15
neeD Cle CreDits?
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For more inormation, visit www.hillsbar.com.
14
JAN - FEB 2020
|
HCBA LAWYER