Cast member Tatiana Maslany attends a premiere for the television series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, in Los Angeles, California, US August 15, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
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(Reuters) – Here’s a sign of just how glaring the lack of diversity at top law firms has become: It’s a key plot line in two popular new television series.
Wince.
Suffice to say, “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” and “Partner Track” are very different shows – but both star a woman lawyer working at an elite law firm. And in both instances, she is more competent, ethical and hard-working than her white male counterparts, only to be slighted, excluded or trotted out in a show of tokenism.
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Granted, one of the women is a green-skinned superhero – but I stand by my point.
As Albert Camus once said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
And sometimes the truth hurts.
According to the National Association for Law Placement’s latest diversity report, law firms remain overwhelmingly dominated by white men. Only 9% of equity partners in 2021 were people of color and 22% were women.
Moreover, the underrepresentation is entrenched – the growth of Black partners has increased by only half a percentage point since 2009, for example, reaching 2.2% last year. Hispanic lawyers make up just 2.9% of partners.
Given these persistent imbalances, it is not surprising that the wider world is taking notice and calling the profession out in popular culture depictions.
“She-Hulk,” now streaming on Disney+, lays diversity as window dressing bare when Holden Holliway, the managing partner of fictional GLK&H, informs new counsel Jennifer Walters why he hired her.
A mousy former assistant district attorney turned She-Hulk via accidental