Women have made up roughly half of law firm associate classes for decades, and firms have invested heavily in mentoring and diversity initiatives, yet the leadership of the profession has changed slowly. Is the problem less about good intentions than about money: who gets credit for clients, who is trusted with risk, and who is positioned to become a rainmaker?
In this TalksOnLaw interview, recorded in late 2022, Joel Cohen speaks with Aviva Will, then co-chief operating officer of the litigation finance firm Burford Capital and an architect of its Equity Project, and Keith Harrison, a partner at Crowell & Moring, co-chair of its litigation group, and a member of its management committee. They discuss how economic incentives can move the needle on diversity in law firms where traditional programs have not.
Origination Credit and Partner Compensation
Will describes a 2020 Burford-commissioned survey of general counsel in which a majority had no idea how their outside firms allocated origination or relationship credit, the credit that drives much of partner compensation and that is often handed down from one generation of white male partners to the next regardless of who does the work. Harrison explains how his firm long ago abandoned origination credit in favor of compensating partners for their contributions to bringing in and keeping clients, a system designed to encourage cross-selling and collaboration that has also made it easier to reward partners for advancing diversity.
Sponsorship, Interview Targets, and Accountability
Harrison describes his firm's formal sponsorship program pairing partners who hold key client relationships with women and minority lawyers who might otherwise be overlooked, its practice of setting targets for the share of diverse candidates interviewed for lateral and leadership positions, and its five-year diversity goals. Will discusses the value of data, tracking who is sent to pitches and who argues motions, pledges in the arbitration community to consider more women and diverse arbitrators, and federal judges' standing orders encouraging firms to give junior lawyers speaking roles in court.
The Equity Project
Will explains how Burford, after reviewing its own data and finding that most funding requests came from teams led by white men, created the Equity Project in 2018 to finance commercial litigation and arbitration led by women, later expanded to racially diverse lawyers. She explains why women partners told her they were reluctant to ask their firms' contingency committees to take risk on cases, how outside capital shifts that risk off the firm, and Burford's commitment to share a portion of its profits from successful matters with organizations that support women and diverse lawyers. Harrison explains why such funding can help lawyers stuck at the non-equity partner level break through.
"Diversity Washing" and the Supreme Court
The conversation addresses how clients can look past the pitch meeting to see who is actually doing, and getting credit for, their work; how clients and firms define diversity, a question Justice Thomas raised at oral argument in the Supreme Court's affirmative action cases; and Harrison's concern, from a firm that filed a brief for historically Black colleges and universities in those cases, that ending race-conscious admissions would shrink the pipeline of minority lawyers.
What to Know Now
In June 2023, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court held that race-conscious college admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI. Results at law schools since have been mixed, with first-year Black enrollment falling at many top schools in 2024 and 2025 while rising at a few. The decision also spurred challenges to race- and sex-conscious programs in the private sector, and practitioners advising on initiatives like those discussed here should evaluate them under current law. Challenges brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and Title VII led several large law firms to open diversity fellowships to all applicants in 2023, and in 2024 the Eleventh Circuit held that a venture fund's grant program limited to Black women business owners likely violated § 1981. In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025), the Court unanimously held that Title VII plaintiffs who are members of a majority group need not meet a heightened standard. In 2025 a presidential executive order directed federal agencies to combat private-sector DEI programs they consider illegal, and the EEOC sent letters to 20 large law firms seeking information about their DEI-related employment practices. Burford expanded the Equity Project in 2024, reporting more than $300 million earmarked and 19 matters funded. According to NALP's 2025 data, women now make up about 52 percent of law firm associates and a record 29.6 percent of partners, while the share of associates of color fell for the first time since 2010, to about 30 percent, and partners of color held steady at about 12.7 percent.
