Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
ISSN
0010-1958
Publisher
Columbia Law Review Association, Inc.
Language
en-US
Abstract
Ever since the 1970s when BigLaw firms began to hire Black lawyers into their associate ranks, these firms have wrestled with problems in both recruiting and retaining Black associates. During the ensuing decades, BigLaw firms have minimally increased the low numbers of Black attorneys who have become partners, particularly equity partners, within their organizations. Numerous scholars have explored how racial bias and discrimination, both within BigLaw firms and greater society, have contributed to such failures in the recruitment, retention, and promotion of Black lawyers. In his new book The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace, Professor Kevin Woodson, a Black law professor and sociologist who once worked as an associate at a large, elite law firm, offers his own theory about how “racial discomfort,” and specifically “social alienation” and “stigma anxiety” related to race, have functioned together to create and maintain racial disparities in BigLaw attrition and partnership. This Book Review examines Woodson’s insights against the backdrop of recent high-profile employment discrimination litigation embroiling BigLaw firms across the country, focusing on one recent case, Cardwell v. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, in which the plaintiff, a Black former associate, alleged he had been fired in retaliation for raising concerns about racial discrimination at his law firm. The Book Review extends Woodson’s research by identifying and assessing innovative firm- and industry-wide policies that can mitigate the impact of racial discomfort on Black associates’ prospects for thriving in and attaining partnership at BigLaw firms.
Recommended Citation
Angela Onwuachi-Willig & Anthony V. Alfieri,
Book Review: BigLaw's Race Problem
,
125
Columbia Law Review
703
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4049
Comments
Book review of: The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace
By Kevin Woodson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2023.
Pp. 216. $26.00.