What ‘She-Hulk’ and ‘Partner Track’ tell us about law firms’ diversity problems

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

(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.

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 exposure to her cousin Bruce Banner’s blood, Walters can transform into a giant, green-skinned superhero at will, minus Banner’s smashing rage.

“I’m great at controlling my anger. I do it all the time,” is how she accounts for her ability to stay calm, adding that “when incompetent men explain my own area of ​​expertise to me, I do it pretty much every day.”

Holliway tells Walters that the firm wants her to be “the face” of a new practice group dedicated to “superhuman law.”

“I’ll expect you to be at work and in court as the She-Hulk, not a normal person,” he says.

When Walters then walks into the office, tall and green, a gaggle of white male co-workers open gawk.

We hear her thoughts: “Okay, this sucks. I am totally qualified but now everyone around me will always think that this is the only reason I got the job.”

Superhuman law might be make-believe, but there are real-life echoes here – think having a woman or lawyer of color sit at the counsel table in court or tag along on a pitch, without being given any meaningful role.

“Partner Track,” now streaming on Netflix, strives for more verisimilitude, with characters throwing around phrases like intangible assets and MAC clauses. One lawyer even name-drops Kirkland & Ellis as a competitor to the fictional Parsons, Valentine & Hunt.

(The series is based on a novel by Helen Wan, who according to my Reuters colleague Karen Sloan started her career in 1998 as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.)

When we meet sixth-year M&A associate Ingrid Yun, the daughter of Korean immigrants, she’s promptly mistaken by a new client for support staff – never mind her fabulous pink power suit.

When he realizes his mistake, the (white male) client explains, “You just don’t look a day over 18 to me. You folks are lucky that way,” and taps the side of his nose.

No. just no.

Yun’s male counterparts steal her ideas, play football in the halls and ingratiate themselves to clients based on shared lacrosse exploits.

To be sure, she pushes back, soundly defeating one man at beer pong, for example. But Yun also works much harder – so much harder – than her male colleagues, and for naught.

During what was supposed to be a stand-up comedy routine at the firm’s annual retreat, a favored white male associate goes on a rant about being accused of “white fragility.”

The subsequent exchange between Yun and an openly gay, Black colleague who decides in response to quit, is telling.

The offensive routine is an example of “why we need to make partner,” Yun argues. “When we’re at the top, we push them inch by inch, and then eventually, everything will change.”

Her friend responds, “No. I will not measure progress in inches,” he says. “I don’t think I can do this anymore. The system always protects its own.”

Such fictional portrayals strike me as a double-edged sword. Shining a light on subtle (and not so subtle) biases may spur firms to look inward and do better – especially since millions of people have now watched these two shows.

But at the same time, the depictions may serve to inadvertently reinforce the message that Big Law is a white man’s game.

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