I wasn't sure how to title this post. Originally, I was thinking of a quote from Peter Griffin on Family Guy from the episode Jungle Love, in which, after virtually enslaving the natives of a remote island, he says, "Finally, a white man has a chance to be in charge and succeed." Or it was something like that. But I didn't want to get carried away with Family Guy quotes like I did with Star Wars ones in the last two posts.

I was recently reading a copy of the National Post in which they talked about awards that were given out to lawyers who worked on huge deals. Let me start by saying that this post in no way is meant to take away any of their praise or glory from their accomplishments. Many of my friends who work on such deals may go days without sleep to see it through. That's a pretty big sacrifice that I'm not sure I could handle.

The problem that I have is not with the lawyers working on deals, the National Post or the writers. Rather, my problem is that the article indirectly shows a problem with the legal profession. The large majority of the lawyers involved are not visible minorities. In many Canadian cities today, visible minorities constitute almost half of the population. At the awards ceremony, visible minorities were barely a blip on the radar. This clearly shows that visible minorities are not being given the opportunity to accomplish the same things in the legal profession.

Before "haterz" start jumping in with other evidence of visible minorities doing well, I want to establish that it is still possible for visible minorities to do well in the legal profession. It just may not be through the traditional avenues that law schools, the Law Society or business publications would have you believe, and not with the same publicity.

My point is that it is a lot more difficult for a visible minority to find his or her way to be in the position to work on such large deals. A good friend of mine working for a Bay Street firm has even joked that he is the token affirmative action lawyer hired by the firm. Notwithstanding the fact that he is a very smart and talented lawyer, he believes that if he were not a visible minority, more opportunities would have been available to him, even though he is very happy with his current situation.

This problem also flows down to the mid-sized firms. When attempting to secure a job after law school, I interviewed with a firm that hired nothing but visible minorities for support staff, but none of the lawyers at the firm were minorities. Similarly, another firm that I did a closing with recently had it's entire support staff populated with visible minorities while the lawyers were not. I've mentioned to my staff that these firms have clearly established a form of institutional slavery: Visible minorities may work for lawyers, but the lawyers will never allow one of "them" to share power.

With the population of Canada becoming more diverse, this continuing problem is troubling for young lawyers. Don't expect the Law Society to do much about it; the most they can do is talk about the problem and "encourage" firms to change their ways. But that's it.

        

 

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