PEORIA — Sonni Williams shook her head when asked if there was still gender bias within the legal profession.
“Oh yes,” said Williams, who is an assistant city attorney for Peoria and a commissioner on an Illinois Supreme Court panel tasked with seeing why that is. For the next year, the commission will try to find out why women and minorities are leaving large law firms at a faster rate than white men.
And if they can figure that out, the hope is the firms will change their practices and wind up hiring more minorities.
Dubbed the Diversity and Inclusion Project, it will be composed of judges and attorneys from across the state. Williams views this as a way to help law firms better themselves as well as better represent the public.
“The students who are coming out of law school are more diverse than those who are in law firms. Why is that? That’s what we are trying to learn,” she said. “This isn’t about blame. We aren’t going to force anyone to do anything but we are looking to see why it is happening. It could be something inadvertently done by the law firm. They might not even know what they are doing.”
The project was born after the Illinois Supreme Court wanted to see how diverse the bar was in Illinois. There had been several studies across the nation looking at the topic but nothing specific to Illinois. Initially, just large civil law firms — ones with more than 20 attorneys — will be polled, but that could change. The project is in its infancy and could evolve to include other areas such as the criminal bar or even bankruptcy. And while the commission has no authority to order a firm to hire anyone, it can offer suggestions.
Andy Kravetz can be reached at 309 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.