AFFIRMATIVE REACTION: THE BLUEPRINT FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION AFTER SFFA

This Articleis both a descriptive and prescriptive authority on the efforts of the legal profession's ongoing attempts to achieve diversity and inclusion. It lays bare the history of the legal profession's unsuccessful diversity and inclusion efforts and explores the efficacy and success of some of the solutions that the legal profession has crafted to turn the tide on implicit bias and the resulting lack of diversity and inclusion in the profession. Most relevantly for this new post-affirmative action era, I set out a blueprint of sorts for the legal profession that will incentivize Big Law and others who have not figured out why diversity makes sense for the legal profession's bottom line-monetarily and morally speaking. This is the Articlethat brings to light the possibilities when the legal profession recognizes its most important commodity-its human capital, both the lawyersand their clients.PartI of the Articlebegins with a discussion about the difficulties surrounding the language of diversity, which has impacted attempts to address its absencein so many of our institutions and organizations, especially the legal profession. PartII details some of the solutions that havelegal institutions havetraditionally employed to address the lack of diversity in the profession and some of the impediments preventing those solutions from being successful. Also, PartII discusses the business and medical professions thatseemingly have been more successful in incentivizing their educational institutions and professionals to engage in diversity and inclusion efforts. Turning to the more prescriptive part(s) of the Article, PartIII discusses the LSAT and bar exam, and the roles they play as gateways to the profession, as well as some current trends that may make these examsless of an impediment to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession going forward. Finally, PartIV explains the role that human relationships can play in addressing the lack of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession-that being the covert racism-which is the most prevalent form of racism in society today. Included in this part of the Articleis a discussion about the importance of incentivizing members of the legal profession to engage in cross-racial, -cultural, and -gender mentorships, sponsorships, as well asallyships to address this intractable problem, thereby leveraging the profession's human capital in ways that have never been done effectively.