Careers & Diversity
Legal careers are changing rapidly—and the profession’s increasing diversity has been both a driver of, and profoundly affected by, these changes. The Center is at the forefront of empirically studying these issues, producing some of the most important scholarship on these topics.
Research Projects
Defining Success in Law Firms
This project seeks to generate knowledge about how to advance systemic equality in law firms while at the same time strengthening firms’ overall competitiveness. The research will investigate how law firm cultures inadvertently reproduce gender, race, and other forms of inequality among lawyers within firms.
HLS Career Study
Begun with a generous grant from a visionary group of women alumnae in connection with the 55th celebration of the graduation of the school’s first female students in 1953, the HLS Career Study seeks to deepen the understanding of the career choices made by HLS graduates by providing for the first time systematic empirical information about the careers trajectories of graduates from different points in the school’s history.
Black Alumni Study
Launched in conjunction with the first Celebration of Black Alumni (CBA) event in 2000 and updated in 2016, the HLS Black Alumni survey documents the achievements and experiences of the school’s black alumni. The survey asks questions about career trajectories and mobility, employment status, job satisfaction, the impact of race and other demographic characteristics on career paths, and other important professional and individual issues.
After the JD
Run out of the American Bar Foundation (ABF), the After the JD project is an empirical study of the career outcomes of a cohort of almost 5,000 new lawyers, offering both a nationally representative picture of lawyer career trajectories and an in-depth portrait of the careers of women and racial and ethnic minority lawyers.
Opportunities
Want to get involved in our work? Check out our opportunities.