Key takeaways
- Fewer U.S. law firms and lawyers contributed demographic data to the 2025 NALP Report on Diversity, which may affect analysis of overall trends. Participation declined by roughly 29% of lawyers and 32% of law offices.
- NALP leadership points to a growing reluctance among legal employers to publicly share demographic information.
- Women remain the majority of associates and reached a record share of partners, despite a slight drop in overall representation.
- The percentage of associates of color decreased for the first time since 2010.
- The percentage of lawyers with a disability increased.
- The percentage of LGBTQ+ lawyers declined for the first time since NALP began tracking this data.
The National Association for Law Placement (NALP)’s annual Report on Diversity includes data from fewer lawyers and law firms in 2025, reflecting a notable shift in participation across the legal industry.
The Report on Diversity is NALP’s annual analysis of demographic findings from the NALP Directory of Legal Employers (NDLE), which is comprised of data provided by legal employers and published by NALP.
NALP Executive Director Nikia L. Gray said the smaller dataset “reflects a dramatic shift in the willingness of legal employers to publicly disclose demographic information.”
“Demographic data is not merely a collection of numbers. It represents real people, real experiences, and real disparities,” Gray said.
In 2025, approximately 29% fewer lawyers and 32% fewer law offices shared their demographic data with NALP. This change reduced the dataset to about 76,000 lawyers in 2025, compared to 107,000 in 2024. The report also notes that larger firms, in particular, were underrepresented in reporting.
While these changes complicate direct year-over-year comparisons, the available data still points to fluctuations across key measures of diversity in firms.
Overall percentage of women lawyers decreases
While the overall representation of women lawyers declined slightly to 40.50%, 0.4 percentage points lower than 2024, women continue to make up a majority of associates.
In 2025, 52.09% of associates were women, up from 51.62% in 2024, and women partners reached a record 29.55%.
The report attributes the overall decline in women attorneys, in part, to a higher concentration of partners in the 2025 dataset (44.7% compared to 41.5% in the 2024 dataset), a group in which women are underrepresented.
Representation of women among summer associates also declined for the second consecutive year, though women still make up more summer associates than men. In 2025, women comprised 55.26% of summer associates, slightly below the percentage of women graduating from law school.
Associates of color decrease for first time since 2010
According to NALP’s 2025 report, racial and ethnic diversity in law firms has stagnated or declined in several areas.
The percentage of lawyers of color at the partner level is essentially unchanged from 2024 at 12.67%, and the number of associates of color have declined to 30.20%, down from 43.07% in 2024. This is the first decrease in associates of color since 2010.
This shift was driven in part by reduced representation among Asian and Black associates, the report says. The percentage of Asian associates decreased 1.6 percentage points from 2024, dropping to 11.70%. The percentage of Black associates declined by 0.2 percentage points from 2024, landing at 6.18%.
The most significant drop in numbers occurred among summer associates. Representation of summer associates of color fell by 5.5 percentage points to 37.53%, the largest decrease recorded in NALP’s tracking. Black summer associate representation has now declined for three consecutive years.
Overall, lawyers of color (lawyers who identify as Asian, Black or African American, Latinx, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and multiracial) made up about 20% of all lawyers in the dataset, a decrease of more than one percentage point from the prior year.
Data trends across disability and LGBTQ+ data
The percentage of lawyers with disabilities has increased over the past six years. In 2025, lawyers with disabilities represented 3.06% of all lawyers, up from 2.54% in 2024. Associates were nearly twice as likely as partners to report having a disability, at 3.80% compared to 2.13%.
The report notes that disability data is less widely reported and likely underreported compared to race, ethnicity, and gender, making definitive conclusions more difficult.
Representation of LGBTQ+ lawyers overall declined slightly to 4.90%, marking the first decrease since NALP began tracking this data. The report noted that some of this decline may be attributed to fewer larger firms represented in the 2025 dataset, as larger firms typically have greater representation of LGBTQ+ lawyers.
At the same time, LGBTQ+ representation among associates reached a record 7.87%.
To read the full report, click here.
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