Abstract
Although Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial minority groups in law schools and the American legal profession, they are underrepresented in leadership positions compared with their overall numbers within the profession. What explains this disparity? The existing literature on the “bamboo ceiling” highlights how social stereotypes, cultural biases, and workplace dynamics have hindered the occupational advancement of Asian Americans. But there is a dearth of such research on the legal profession. Using survey data and focus group interviews, we examine Asian American perceptions of inequality in the legal workplace. Our data show that while Asian American lawyers perceive some leadership barriers that are similar to those faced by other racial minorities, they also report that pervasive social stereotypes perpetuate beliefs that Asian Americans lack the traits typically associated with leadership. By identifying and analyzing these workplace challenges, this article contributes to research on the bamboo ceiling and informs efforts to promote greater workplace equality.
From 1990 to 2010, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) were the fastest-growing racial minority group entering US law schools (Chung et al. 2017; Li et al. 2020).1 In the wake of the global financial crisis and Great Recession (2008–2009), the number of AAPI law students declined precipitously—more so than any other racial or ethnic group. But recently the numbers have rebounded, with women driving an increase in Asian American law school enrollment (Li et al. 2020; Leipold 2025). As a result of these long-term trends, Asian Americans have been the largest racial minority group in private law firms. They made up more than 13 percent of all 2024 law firm associates, compared with roughly 6 percent for African Americans, 7 percent for Latinx, and less than 1 percent for Native Americans (NALP 2025).2 More broadly, Asian Americans have penetrated nearly every aspect of the American legal profession, from large law firms to the judiciary, to general counsel offices of large corporations, to the public and nonprofit sectors and the legal academy.
Despite these gains, Asian Americans are underrepresented in nearly all leadership positions compared with their overall numbers within law schools and the broader legal profession. In 2021, they comprised 8.7 percent of graduates of the top thirty law schools (compared with 6.2 percent for Black students and 8.9 percent for Latinx students), but less than 6 percent of all federal judicial clerks (Dang et al. 2022). Similarly, although Asian Americans have high entry rates into law firms,3 few advance to the ranks of equity partners—the highest rung of advancement in private law firms. Furthermore, Asian American associates leave private practice at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group.4 As a result, the share of partners who are AAPI compared with the share of associates who are AAPI is lower than comparable shares for all other racial or ethnic groups—a finding that has been consistent for roughly two decades (Dang et al. 2022).5 Overall, the upper echelons of private law practice remain predominantly White, with few minority attorneys occupying the highest positions of power and prestige (Leipold 2025).6
Although there have been notable increases recently among Asian American federal judges and general counsel at Fortune 1000 companies (Dang et al. 2022), Asian Americans continue to lag behind in other areas. There is perhaps no greater sign of the advancement obstacles faced by AAPI lawyers than the low figures of elected prosecutors and Senate-confirmed US Attorneys: in 2019, only 8 out of 2,396 elected prosecutors identified as Asian American (0.3 percent), compared to 69 identifying as Black (2.9 percent), 35 as Hispanic (1.5 percent), and 2,270 as White (94.8 percent). Similarly, fewer than a handful of the 93 US Attorneys in recent years have identified as Asian American (Dang et al. 2022).
Asian American women, in particular, have faced significant career hurdles in the legal profession, as in other parts of the American labor force (Gee and Peck 2017; Yu 2020; NALP 2024). In 2023, the percentage of Asian American women partners in US law firms surpassed 2 percent for the first time, but the ratio of AAPI women associates to partners remained higher than that of other racial groups (NALP 2024). Similar figures abound in the corporate sector. Women account for less than 6 percent (38 out of 682) of all chief executive officers (CEOs) at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies combined; of those 682 CEOs, only three were Asian women (Yu 2020).
What explains the persistent disparity between the significant number of Asian American entry-level lawyers and their limited presence in the leadership ranks of the profession? The literature on Asian Americans in the workforce frequently points to the “model minority” myth to explain why the challenges Asian Americans face in reaching leadership positions have been overlooked (Museus and Kiang 2009; Yu 2020). The pervasive stereotype that Asians have achieved universal success in educational attainment and occupational mobility—the misguided belief that Asian Americans are the unproblematic model minority—has obscured the reality of restricted professional advancement, including limited access to leadership opportunities.
While Asian Americans have achieved high levels of educational success, this advantage has not fully translated into success in the US labor market (Lee and Kye 2016; Lee and Tran 2019). The literature on the bamboo ceiling explains this lack of success by highlighting how social stereotypes, cultural biases, workplace dynamics, and other systemic obstacles have hindered the career progress of Asian Americans (Hyun 2005; Chin 2016; Gee and Peck 2018). For example, recent research has found evidence that East Asians are under-selected for leadership positions partly because they are stereotyped as lacking creativity (Lu 2024; Dang et al. 2022). Other research has identified social network effects and degree of assertiveness (real and perceived) in explaining the differential success of South Asians compared to East Asians in attaining leadership positions (Lu 2022; Lu et al. 2020). While quantitative research on Asian Americans’ limited success in US labor markets is growing (Woo 2000; Yu 2020; Lu 2024), few studies examine the existence of a bamboo ceiling in the legal profession. Likewise, there are few qualitative studies that draw on Asian American lawyers’ lived experiences and perceptions of the workplace to illuminate the mechanisms of inequality and obstacles to career advancement.
In this article, we provide a novel exploration of such perceptions of workplace inequality among Asian American attorneys. Existing studies have provided important insights into how others—including supervisors, evaluators, and peers—have perceived Asian Americans in the employment context (Lai and Babcock 2013; Lu 2024; Lu et al. 2020). But our knowledge about workplace inequality is incomplete without a better understanding of Asian Americans’ self-perceptions. How Asian American attorneys perceive their workplace can shed light on how bias is interpreted, how everyday behavior is shaped, and how discrimination is experienced. In short, self-perception plays a significant role in how individuals navigate and respond to their professional environments.
More specifically, we examine Asian American lawyers’ self-reported perceptions of racial bias, social stereotypes, cultural preferences, and other obstacles to advancement in the legal profession. We use descriptive statistics from survey data and qualitative evidence from several focus group interviews with Asian American lawyers at different career stages to identify and analyze what these lawyers see as barriers to upward professional mobility. Because our qualitative data can be disaggregated by gender, we probe more deeply the challenges and opportunities faced by Asian American women at different stages of their legal careers.
Drawing on this empirical evidence, we provide several findings about Asian Americans’ perceptions of inequality in the legal workforce, some of which are not unique to Asian Americans. Like lawyers of other racial or ethnic minority groups, Asian American lawyers perceive structural barriers to career advancement. Our survey participants identified the top barriers to advancement as “lack of formal leadership training,” “inadequate access to mentors and contacts,” and “work going unrecognized.” Asian American women respondents, in particular, identified family demands (for example, caring for children or aging parents) as one of their top obstacles, a finding that is common to women throughout the profession. Moreover, Asian American lawyers, like other minorities, perceive racial bias at work. Where existing data are available, we make comparisons between Asian American lawyers and other minority lawyers.
Asian American lawyers also face distinctive obstacles. Our survey data show that they believe others in the profession associate them with social stereotypes, such as introversion and passivity, that are generally not associated with conventional leadership traits, such as assertiveness or creativity. When we compare data over time, we find that the most significant self-reported challenges for Asian American lawyers have persisted across both surveys and focus groups. Furthermore, our evidence shows that women believed they were often associated with gendered Asian traits, such as being quiet, docile, and reserved. Importantly, we complement our survey data with evidence from focus groups, which forms the bulk of our qualitative evidence showing the more nuanced and subtle ways in which Asian Americans perceive and experience disparities in the legal profession.
Documenting Asian American perceptions of inequality in the legal profession is significant for several reasons. It helps us understand what Asian Americans believe to be the contours of the bamboo ceiling and what obstacles they see as holding them back from the highest echelons of leadership. It also helps debunk the myth of the model minority. Moving beyond educational attainment to examine obstacles to career advancement elucidates the fallacy of treating Asian American lawyers as part of an idealized model minority when in fact they struggle with challenges in the legal workforce—challenges that are rooted in the existing power hierarchies within legal organizations. By identifying and analyzing these challenges, this study seeks to promote greater workplace equality, which may in turn affect the health and well-being of AAPI lawyers, their career satisfaction, and their willingness to remain in the profession (Nelson et al. 2023). Finally, because lawyers occupy a vital place in our democracy and system of justice, it is essential for the legal profession to reflect the diversity of the people it serves. Lawful efforts to promote such diversity can improve the development and administration of our laws and increase trust in our democratic institutions (Gerring et al. 2018).
This article begins with a brief overview of the literature, describing research on Asian Americans in the US labor force before turning to studies on diversity in the legal profession. Much of the extant literature provides a useful theoretical framework for studying Asian American lawyers, and we highlight this study’s contributions to the literature. We then describe our methods and evidence, explaining how we selected our survey and focus group participants and details of our data-gathering process. Finally, we discuss and analyze our main findings, drawing on quantitative data from our surveys to identify patterns and then turning mainly to qualitative comments from our focus groups. We conclude by summarizing key findings and discussing implications for future research and policy reform.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
A rich and growing social science literature has identified a bamboo ceiling limiting leadership opportunities for Asian Americans in the US labor force (Hyun 2005; Gee and Peck 2018). Research has shown that Asian Americans have quickly become the largest racial cohort of professionals in the US labor market, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as health care (US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2022; Min and Jang 2014). Despite these gains, Asian Americans remain the least likely among all racial and ethnic groups to become executive leaders in the private or public sectors—especially Asian American women, who face the greatest obstacles (Yu 2020). The bamboo ceiling reflects a combination of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that together obstruct the advancement of Asian Americans into the highest echelons of the workplace.
Scholars from various disciplines have been exploring the persistence of such a bamboo ceiling. Some have used national survey data to explore how the family backgrounds and academic expectations of Asian Americans might lead them to gravitate toward fields that are perceived as more reliable and stable, which can inadvertently limit their exposure to leadership opportunities (Xie and Goyette 2003). Similar data have been used to investigate the prevalence of perceived discrimination in Asian American promotion decisions (Yu 2020; Ramakrishnan et al. 2018). Others have relied on interviews and related empirical evidence to show how social stereotypes have negatively labeled Asians as lacking the social skills, such as being extroverted and assertive, that are deemed necessary for leadership by mainstream Americans (Lai and Babcock 2013; Gee and Peck 2017; Zhou and Lee 2017).
Still others have conducted field experiments to show that many Asians are frequently identified as lacking creativity and the social skills and networks necessary to become effective leaders. This research also examines interethnic differences among Asians, suggesting that East Asians are often perceived as less assertive than South Asians (Lu 2022; Lu 2024; Lu et al. 2020). This emerging literature on potential subethnic differences among the broad group of Asian Americans indicates that the bamboo ceiling might be more porous for some subgroups. While the growing social science literature has advanced our understanding of the obstacles faced by Asian Americans in the overall labor market, there is little evidence on the specific challenges that Asian Americans face in the legal profession—a profession that plays a unique and vital role in safeguarding our democracy and the rule of law.
Although research on diversity in the legal profession has expanded recently, only a few studies have focused on Asian American lawyers (Quan 1988; Chew 1994). Scholars of the American legal profession have long recognized the social stratification of the bar in terms of race, gender, and class. From the pioneering studies of the Chicago bar (Heinz and Laumann 1982) to more recent investigations of inequality in the profession (Nelson et al. 2023), scholars have demonstrated how a fundamental cleavage between large law firm attorneys and small or solo practice lawyers continues to define many aspects of the US legal profession, including the opportunities available to women and racial minorities.
With the rising number of women and racial minorities in the profession, researchers have also shown how the profession’s hierarchical structure, power asymmetries, and stratification process have led to lower earnings, higher attrition rates, and lower job satisfaction among women and underrepresented racial minorities (Dixon and Seron 1995; Wilkins and Gulati 1996; Epner 2006; Payne-Pikus et al. 2010; Nance and Madsen 2014; Sterling and Chanow 2021; Nelson et al. 2023). Moreover, this research illustrates how the work environment and culture of many legal organizations can be unwelcoming and challenging for women and racial minorities who experience lack of mentorship and limited networking opportunities. Scholarship on women in private practice, in particular, has demonstrated the many ways that women are undervalued in earnings by a “motherhood penalty” and are frequently denied promotions to partner because they are “counseled out” or terminated by firms (Gorman and Kmec 2009; Sterling and Reichman 2016; Owens and Rivera 2025). In addition, research has shown how gender and racial identities together, especially for young women lawyers of color, affect professional success (Collins et al. 2017; Crenshaw 2013).
Leaders of the US bench and bar have acknowledged the need for greater gender and racial diversity, particularly at the top ranks of the profession (Rhode and Ricca 2015). But there remains a disconnect between the profession’s goals of greater representation of women and minority lawyers and the persistent hierarchies of race, gender, and class (Headworth et al. 2016). Women, for example, have made tremendous gains in law school enrollment and entry into large law firms in the past few decades. Yet relative to those numbers, women remain underrepresented at the most senior ranks of law firms (Owens and Rivera 2025). In 2024, they comprised more than half of new law firm associates but less than one-quarter of equity partners nationally (NALP 2025). Similar disparities hold for lawyers of racial and ethnic minority groups. That same year, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans accounted for almost one-third of all law firm associates, but only 10 percent of equity partners (NALP 2025). Asian Americans, as we have seen, have the highest ratio of associate share to partner share and the largest attrition rates among underrepresented minority groups (NALP 2025).
Against this backdrop, our study makes several theoretical contributions to understanding the contours of the bamboo ceiling in law. First, many of our respondents have compiled a great deal of achievements within the “success frame” of their Asian American families and communities (Lee and Zhou 2015); they have excelled in educational settings, attained a job in a desirable profession, and achieved other success markers as understood within and supported by the networks of particular ethnic communities (Lee et al. 2024; Huang 2020). Our respondents have graduated from top colleges and law schools and are working in the coveted field of law. They have relied on “strategic adaptation” to select an occupation that requires advanced educational credentials and licensing, and applies specialized knowledge and competence (Xie and Goyette 2003; Lee et al. 2024). Yet our findings suggest that strategic adaptation to a success frame has limitations, particularly when it comes to advancement in the legal profession. Educational or other advantages achieved through the success frame seem to slip away in the legal workplace, especially in advancing to leadership positions.
The second contribution that our study makes is to our understanding of how Asian American lawyers have responded to the constraints of their occupational settings. Building on recent scholarship on how second-generation Asian American professionals have negotiated the workplace (Huang 2020), our research not only identifies a similar set of challenges but also analyzes the coping strategies that Asian American lawyers have adopted to address these challenges. Like other Asian American professionals, our respondents noted that they lacked the mentors and social and professional networks of their White peers, which in turn inhibited their ability to advance their careers in law firm settings. They responded by seeking out their own mentors and sponsors, and by creating their own social support groups and peer networks. Similarly, when Asian American attorneys have experienced racialized incidents or negative social stereotyping, they have responded by minimizing the role of race—in some cases, by “acting White” (Carbado and Gulati 2013)—and by distancing themselves from such stereotypes.
Finally, our study provides a foundation for future research on subgroup differences among Asian American legal professionals. Other scholars have identified cultural differences among Asian American subgroups that might translate into different perceptions of social identity affecting leadership opportunities (Lu et al., 2020; Lu 2022). Although our data do not allow definitive conclusions about ethnic subgroup differences, our study offers a starting point and framework for future inquiry into these questions.
METHODS AND EVIDENCE
In this section, we explain the methods and evidence used in this article’s discussion and analysis of Asian American attorneys’ self-perceptions of workplace inequality. Our data are drawn from two sets of studies conducted under the auspices of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) and the American Bar Foundation (ABF), with support from other legal organizations and individuals.7 NAPABA is the country’s largest professional organization representing the interests of Asian Pacific American attorneys. Given its large membership, NAPABA was particularly instrumental in helping us gather data and produce the two original studies that form the basis of our research (Chung et al. 2017; Dang et al. 2022). The ABF is an independent nonpartisan research institute focused on the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. One of the ABF’s hallmark studies, “After the JD” (AJD), is a national longitudinal study of legal careers (Nelson et al. 2023). Data from the AJD project on diversity in the profession were used in the two earlier studies. This article integrates the quantitative survey results from the two studies with new qualitative data mainly from focus group interviews conducted in 2021.
The two surveys were conducted in 2016 and 2022 through NAPABA and its affiliated networks. Both were online Qualtrics surveys distributed via email to NAPABA members.8 The first survey, conducted in 2016 and found in the online appendix, consisted of 68 questions completed by roughly 600 respondents, with a response rate of approximately 30 percent.9 The respondents were 57 percent women and 43 percent men; 11 percent were under the age of 30, 41 percent were ages 30–39, 30 percent were ages 40–49, 12 percent were ages 50–59, and 7 percent were aged 60 or older. Of respondents, 66 percent were born in the United States, and 34 percent were born abroad. The ethnic makeup consisted of 35 percent Chinese, 22 percent Korean, 11 percent Filipino, 11 percent Japanese, 10 percent Taiwanese, 8 percent Vietnamese, and 8 percent Indian, and roughly 7 percent reported other ethnicities.10 By employment sector, 46 percent of respondents were in private practice at law firms or solo practice, 25 percent in government positions, 20 percent as corporate counsel, and 6 percent in nonprofit organizations or academia.11 This survey gathered data on basic demographics, parental education, law school experiences, career choices, political participation, future aspirations, and, most importantly for this article, experiences in the legal workforce.
The second survey, conducted in 2022, was an online survey distributed via email and had over 700 respondents, with a response rate of roughly 15 percent.12 It received responses from a broad cross-section of NAPABA members that was demographically similar to the first survey and representative of the broader population of NAPABA members; in this sense, our data collection methods followed the best practices for survey research as recommended by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (2025). The second survey had slightly more women: 61 percent of respondents identified as women, 39 percent as men, and 1 percent as another gender identity. Respondents were older: 5 percent were under the age of 30, 30 percent were ages 30–39, 33 percent were ages 40–49, 17 percent were ages 50–59, and 15 percent were aged 60 or older. The self-reported country of origin was nearly identical to the first survey, with two-thirds born in the United States and one-third born abroad.13 The ethnic composition and parental education levels were also similar to the first survey: with 42 percent Chinese, 20 percent Korean, 11 percent Japanese, 9 percent Filipino, 10 percent Taiwanese, 7 percent Indian, 5 percent Vietnamese, and 5 percent other ethnicities. In terms of parental education, 23 percent reported that neither parent had a bachelor’s degree, 21 percent had both parents with graduate degrees, and 5 percent had at least one parent with a law degree. Finally, the occupational distribution was similar as well: 43 percent of 2022 respondents were from private practice in law firms or solo practice, 20 percent from government, 18 percent from corporate counsel, 7 percent from the nonprofit sector, and 2 percent from academia.14
The 2022 survey instrument, which can be found in the online appendix, consisted of 92 questions, replicating many items from the original survey and adding new ones about identity in the workplace, mental health, and current events. The instrument measured the experiences and perceptions of our respondents, with many items using a 5-point Likert scale. The survey had three sections. The first explored law school experiences, probing motivations for obtaining a law degree and experiences in law school, including mentorship opportunities. The second section examined employment experiences, asking questions about workplace diversity, perceived discrimination, and related topics. The third section focused on respondents’ future ambitions, their sense of identity in the workplace, engagement with political activities, mental health, and views on recent political events.
While our survey data are not longitudinal, the use of NAPABA’s membership to conduct both surveys suggests some overlap between the two groups of respondents. The 2022 respondents were demographically consistent with those from the 2016 survey across a range of characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity, immigration background, and professional setting. Although our study does not survey the same human subjects across time, the demographic consistency suggests that the respondent pool remained broadly representative of NAPABA’s membership.
With that said, we acknowledge the inherent limitations of survey-based research, particularly in the context of declining response rates for online and email-based surveys. Prior methodological research indicates that response rates for such surveys typically range from 25 percent to 30 percent (Shih and Fan 2008); by comparison, our response rates were 30 percent for the 2016 survey and 15 percent for the 2022 survey. Further, we recognize the potential for nonresponse bias. Such bias occurs when those who choose to respond differ in meaningful ways from those who do not (Groves and Peytcheva 2008). Certain perspectives—especially from members less engaged with NAPABA or more marginalized within the profession—may be underrepresented in our sample. Our respondents may tend to reflect those individuals within the population who felt they had “something to say” about the topics at issue, while individuals who had less well-formed views or who were content with their career or workplace circumstances may have been less motivated to respond. Finally, our sampling frame (NAPABA members) limits our ability to make firm claims about Asian American lawyers writ large.
In this study, we rely less on the survey data to support our claims and more on our qualitative focus group evidence. In using the survey data as a baseline to identify key patterns of self-perceived inequality in the legal workforce, we treat this source of evidence as large-scale qualitative data rather than as a representative sample of Asian American lawyers overall. Our focus group data, moreover, corroborate the patterns identified from the surveys; they provide narrative depth, nuance, and context to the patterns, illustrating the experiences of Asian American attorneys. This triangulation between methods helps mitigate concerns about the use of the survey data and supports the overall validity of our conclusions.
The focus group evidence is drawn from the 2022 study. In December 2021, our research team conducted eleven in-person focus group interviews with a total of seventy Asian American attorneys at the NAPABA annual convention in Washington, DC.15 Each respondent volunteered in advance to participate. The groups were organized by practice setting (for example, large law firms, corporate counsel, government, and public interest), ethnicity, gender, and seniority in the profession. There were six to eight participants in each group, and they were interviewed as a group. The interviews lasted roughly one hour and followed a standard script to canvass attorneys’ experiences with race, identity, and activism over the last five years (see focus group script in the online appendix). We also raised questions about mental health and perceptions of the workplace, including obstacles to professional advancement and perceived discrimination. Our script included open-ended questions about how racial or ethnic identities influenced their professional interactions and the barriers they perceived to career advancement. We also asked how recent events—including immigration restrictions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased anti-Asian violence—have shaped their professional attitudes and behaviors. The focus group discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by our research team. The qualitative evidence guided modifications to our 2022 survey instrument and informed our overall findings.
We recognize the potential for social desirability bias in our focus group data. To mitigate this bias and elicit more candid and authentic responses, we took several steps grounded in fundamental social science approaches (Krueger and Casey 2000). First, we assured all participants anonymity and confidentiality in their responses, which we maintained throughout the collection and analysis of data. Second, we carefully composed the focus groups to create more comfortable environments; we separated groups by seniority, for instance, to ensure that law firm partners were not in the same group as junior associates. Third, we triangulated the focus group data with written anonymous responses from our open-ended survey questions. With these steps, we have greater confidence in the validity and accuracy of our focus group evidence. In this article, the bulk of our original evidence consists of anonymous quotes from the December 2021 focus group participants and open-ended survey questions. As in other sociolegal studies on diversity in the legal profession that rely primarily on qualitative data, our focus groups provide insights into the lived experiences of Asian Americans in the legal workforce, thereby painting “a detailed picture that is invisible in tables of quantitative data” (Garth and Sterling 2018, 128).
DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Together, our survey results and focus group interviews identify some of the common experiences of inequality observed by Asian Americans in the legal workforce. Some of our findings and analysis apply to all racial minorities, such as the lack of mentoring and leadership training opportunities, while others are unique to Asian social stereotypes, such as perceptions that Asian Americans are diligent workers but not leadership material. In this section, we first examine the perceived primary obstacles to professional advancement. We next explore the pervasive stereotypes that Asian American lawyers believe are frequently attributed to them. Finally, we investigate the self-perceptions of overt and implicit discrimination observed by our participants.
Obstacles to Advancement
Both surveys document similar perceived impediments to career advancement, with female respondents noting additional barriers and more pronounced challenges. The top three obstacles identified in the two surveys were the same: “lack of formal leadership training,” “inadequate access to mentors and contacts,” and “work going unrecognized.” In both surveys, “lack of formal leadership training” was identified as one of the leading barriers to career advancement, with roughly 40 percent of respondents selecting this choice in both surveys. “Limited access to mentors and contacts” was identified as a barrier by nearly half of the respondents in 2016 (the top choice) and by 37 percent of respondents in 2022. And approximately one-third of respondents cited “my work goes unrecognized” as a barrier in 2016 and in 2022. Thus, the survey results show persistence of the same set of observed hurdles (see figure 1). The same gender disparity appeared in both surveys. Women reported more barriers than men in both surveys, and they more frequently cited family demands (for example, taking care of children and aging parents) and lack of recognition for their work (Chung et al. 2017; Dang et al. 2022).
In some ways, these findings are not surprising. They match what other scholars studying diversity in the legal profession have noted, especially the lack of mentoring and networking opportunities (Nelson et al. 2023; Payne-Pikus et al. 2010) and the particular challenges faced by women of color (Collins et al. 2017). Yet the qualitative data from our studies demonstrate the depth and distinctive nature of the bias that Asian American lawyers face. Our focus group data provide additional evidence of the main barriers to professional advancement. The anonymous quotes below are drawn mainly from our 2021 focus groups; where relevant, we have included respondents’ gender, seniority, and practice setting.
Although the focus group participants did not use the specific term “formal leadership programs” in their comments, several law firm attorneys noted that they received little encouragement to learn more about business development or generating new clients—what is colloquially referred to in the profession as building “a book of business.” Bringing in new clients and retaining existing ones are often prerequisites to promotion to equity partnership, which is the domain of firm leadership (Wilkins 2001). As a Korean American male partner at a mid-size firm reflected: “I wanted to develop my own book. I wanted to have my own clients. And I remember I really tried hard. I tried saying, ‘Okay, I’m now at a point in my career where I want to do this. I want to start bringing people in.’ And I didn’t get much support for that” (Senior Career Stage, Law Firm FG7, Speaker 8, 13). Although this respondent did become a partner, it was only after leaving his initial law firm.
A male Vietnamese American mid-level associate described a similar experience: “In fact, I had a lot of partners coming up to me, trying to discourage me from doing a lot of things.” This respondent noted that he understood the importance of generating clients and that he spent “an extra five to six hundred hours a year, on top of what I billed, doing business development.” Ironically, when he became successful, the same partners turned to him for advice. “What was interesting was that the partners that essentially discouraged me from bringing in business, as soon as I brought in the business, would come up to me and [ask me] ‘Would you be willing to come to the next partners’ meeting and give us a presentation on how you brought in work?’” Despite his success, he added, no program or mentor had been available “to help me with that” (Vietnamese FG, Speaker 4, 12–13).
Business development is not just about getting new clients; it is also about maintaining and expanding long-standing client relationships, which frequently entails passing a book of business to a junior colleague or having confidence that a junior colleague will perform well with clients (Nelson et al. 2023). Many respondents believed that there is a racialized component to this important transition. As one male Chinese American partner at a large firm noted: “I really do think that even today there are significant advantages that Caucasians, White people, both men and women benefit from at large firms that do not benefit minorities, including African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. And one example of that is, as I look back at my career, I have never been handed an institutional client in any big law firm. All of my clients that I represent today are my clients [that] I’ve developed and generated” (Senior Career Stage, Law Firm FG7, Speaker 11, 10).
The same respondent observed a racial pattern. “I have White colleagues who [represent] X company,” this respondent stated. When “that partner retires, it gets passed to another White guy. So, their books of business grow and grow just by sitting there, and the firm just hands them clients. And I have never had that experience at any law firm.” This lack of support, in turn, affected his decision to stay at his large law firm. “So, my career, I think, has been hindered compared to Caucasians at a big law firm. And it’s affected my career in terms of why I’ve moved law firms” (Senior Career Stage, Law Firm FG7, Speaker 11, 10–11).
Client transitions often occur through mentoring relationships. Having a powerful mentor has long been recognized as an important element in law firm success, especially for racial minorities (Dobbin and Kalev 2022; Kay and Gorman 2016). In many organizations, mentoring occurs in a variety of informal ways that are inaccessible to racial minorities and women. Hence the importance of formal mentoring programs: There is evidence that when such programs are made available to everyone, they are often disproportionately utilized by women and minority employees who otherwise lack access to informal mentoring opportunities. These structured programs thus help level the playing field for promotion and advancement (Kalev and Dobbin 2024).
Echoing findings from prior research (Rhode 2018; Nelson et al. 2023), our focus group respondents noted that mentors were important for several reasons, including serving as role models for future success. As one female litigator at a small firm observed, she felt “very lucky” that when she started her career “one of the partners … actually the only female partner” was a Chinese American woman who “became [her] mentor”:
It showed me, it allowed me to see myself in someone who looks like me, with similar backgrounds. It showed me that if she’s able to be a good litigator, to be successful as a litigator, why can’t I do the same? I think it really does help to be able to see yourself in someone else who’s been able to make it. She has always been very supportive, always reaching out, exposing me to opportunities, and introducing me to clients, helping me to build my own practice. I consider her my most important mentor, and now a friend (Vietnamese FG, Speaker 3, 11).
Mentors can be effective role models, especially when they provide guidance and inspiration on how to navigate professional challenges as a member of a racial minority (Leipold 2025).
Without such representation at the top, many Asian American lawyers have little confidence they will break into the exclusive partnership ranks. “It’s hard to be like, ‘Oh I’ll make partner,’ when there’s nobody who looks like me who’s made partner in the last few years,” a South Asian woman associate at a large law firm remarked. “It’s tough because then you’re like … to be the first, there’s a lot more effort than to be a follower, so I think that’s one of the big challenges of retention because if there’s another opportunity, I might take it because I don’t see people who have made it who look like me” (Female, South Asian FG3, Speaker 3, 16).
Several respondents emphasized that the lack of Asian American leaders perpetuates a cycle where up-and-coming lawyers do not see role models who look like them and, as a result, diverge from the leadership track. “I had discussions with a guy,” one senior associate at a large international law firm noted, “the Asian American who was one year above me and we talked about it and we both said, ‘Well, do we really trust that [the firm] is going to make one of us the first Asian partner at the firm?’ And we said, ‘No, probably not.’ So, he left a year before me.” Our respondent soon followed suit. “I left because none of us could trust that they were really going to treat us fairly at the end of the day. Even though they said they would, I just, in my gut, I was like, ‘Is that really going to happen?’ So, it has affected my career just by being Asian American” (Senior Career Stage, Law Firm FG7, Speaker 11, 10–11).
Effective mentors are not just role models; they are also sponsors who champion or “go to bat” for their mentees (Zahralddin-Aravena 2020). Typically, sponsors are senior leaders in an organization who have power, authority, and influence within and outside of the organization. They frequently use their gravitas and political capital to support a junior colleague’s advancement. “Mentors may provide guidance and support only when you meet with them,” one junior lawyer noted. “Sponsors, on the other hand, advocate for you when you are not in the room” (Nguyen and Patel 2019, 10). In this way, sponsors go beyond mentors by investing their social and political capital to directly support a younger lawyer’s career advancement.
Our respondents uniformly noted the importance of such sponsorship but had mixed experiences. The Vietnamese female respondent who celebrated having a Chinese American woman litigator as her mentor noted that she “had a male attorney, a managing partner of [the] firm, who was also someone I consider a mentor … because he went to bat for me with other attorneys, and especially with the other partners.” This participant noted the challenges of balancing work and family and how her male sponsor helped her navigate those challenges to partnership:
I wanted certain accommodations and arrangements, so that I could be both a good, successful attorney at the firm and in the community, as well as being able to be a good mom at home to my kids. That was very important to me, as an attorney, and to be fulfilled in my profession. Because he was able to go to bat for me, and was willing to go to bat for me, it allowed me to stay in my profession to do what I enjoy doing, and to continue to move forward, and to progress, and to become a partner (Female Vietnamese American Partner FG, Speaker 3, 11).
Effective mentoring and sponsorship relations are frequently formed not just by working closely together but also by interacting in social activities. Yet Asian American lawyers, like other minorities, often feel excluded from such activities (Garth and Sterling 2018). “Asians work hard and do not say no to their superiors,” noted one female Asian American associate. “With that, somehow I was the only one staying back to cover the team assignments when the others went out for yoga and wine” (Chung et al. 2017, 31). Although social activities vary, AAPI lawyers noted that they often had a hard time relating to many of them, as one South Asian male associate at a midsize law firm explained:
Most of the partners that I work with are huge hunters. I mean they go to like Montana, and I’ve never had interest in hunting … fishing. … So, it’s challenging to kind of get that caseload because a lot of talk does happen during those [events], when the associate and the partner might go hunting or go fishing or things [like] that. And you get left out because you don’t do those things and it’s weird for me to go and like, I’m just going to tag along. … And these are hobbies that are like. … They’re not cheap hobbies. … Our parents did not have money. As an immigrant, you’re not going on ski trips. … I mean, you’re not going fishing because these are all luxuries (South Asian FG3, Speaker 4, 14-15).
Social activities thus reflect not only cultural differences but also class distinctions.
Respondents also believed that they lacked the social and professional networks that could help them generate business—often an essential criteria for making partner (Galanter and Henderson 2007). “The other thing we are lacking, I think, is we don’t have the connections that a lot of the White partners and associates have,” noted a male junior associate. “Our communities don’t have those contacts because we’re all immigrants” (South Asians FG3, Speaker 3, 20). Although not all our respondents were immigrants, they nearly all believed that others benefited from deeper social networks that gave them access to potential clients, which could lead to credit for originating new business. Another male respondent said:
If one partner has a client because they’re best buds or fraternity brothers from college, then every case that comes after is theirs, then every associate, minority associate who’s working on it, they’re getting hours, but they’re not getting any credit, like origination credit. And then from law firms for promotion, a lot of it depends on how much this person has brought into the firm. … If you want to be partner and if you want to be at the helm of the ship, you have to be a rainmaker at a law firm, you have to have origination [credit] (South Asian FG3, Speaker 4, 17-18).
These comments reinforce what other scholars have found about the importance of social network explanations for the bamboo ceiling (Lu 2022).
Some Asian American lawyers concede that cultural factors may be hindering their long-term success in developing the social and professional networks essential to advancement. “We are not as comfortable asking,” acknowledged one male senior associate. “I have good friends who are in-house, but it’s always awkward to be like, ‘Hey, send me work.’ It’s just not who we are, and I think that’s a drawback that we have, where my White colleague might just be like, ‘Hey, just call them up … ask them for work.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not what we do’” (South Asian FG3, Speaker 3, 20). Such cultural self-perceptions may further entrench the bamboo ceiling. Many Asian Americans report being raised with cultural values that stress humility and modesty, which can make them reluctant to self-promote or be assertive in seeking clients (Yu 2020).
When these perceived obstacles to advancement are combined, there is often a sense of self-doubt that appears to shape the views of our respondents. “When I did not get something that I thought I deserved, how much of that can be attributed to my own failings versus implicit bias?” one respondent asked. “So, there’s always that unanswered question, right, of like, well, do I fall short because of me? Or do I fall short because of other reasons? And you can never really be sure” (Korean FG6, Speaker 5, 11). This sense of uncertainty was even more pronounced in this respondent’s self-reflections about promotion:
The first year I was up for partner, I didn’t get it. And I was surprised. And then I looked at the candidates, and I’m like, “Okay, well, I’m just as good as those people, right?” So, one on one comparison, like, okay, well, I understand why so and so made it, because that person’s got this person in their corner. … But looking from a one to one, a technical comparison, I was like, “I’m just as skilled, I’ve done just as much casework, been to trials, we’ve done this. They don’t have any skills that I don’t have, I’ve generated this much business. So, is it because of me? Or is it because of these other factors and the politics that are involved?” So, I don’t know. Maybe it’s both, I don’t know. But so that’s always going to be something that’s just going to stick with me (Korean FG6, Speaker 5, 11).
The obstacles to professional advancement identified by our survey respondents and the detailed experiences recounted by our focus group participants demonstrate one set of challenges faced by Asian American lawyers. An additional set of challenges arises from stereotypes that participants believed their peers in the legal workplace attributed to them.
Stereotypes
Many of the obstacles to career advancement identified by our respondents are not distinctive to Asian Americans. The existing literature has documented how other racial minorities and women have been hindered by similar impediments (Nelson et al. 2023). But social stereotypes about Asians are a unique part of the experience of Asian American inequality in the legal workplace. These stereotypes perpetuate the model minority myth and help entrench the bamboo ceiling by pigeonholing Asian American lawyers to narrowly defined roles—diligent and responsible employees yet perceived as lacking leadership potential. In both sets of surveys, our respondents identified several traits that they believed other members of the American legal profession have associated with Asians. The responses were nearly identical across the two surveys (see figure 2). A vast majority of survey respondents answered that in their experience the following traits were “very often” or “often” associated with AAPI attorneys: “hardworking” and “responsible” (greater than 80 percent) and “logical” and “careful” (over 70 percent). While these qualities are generally valued, they also align with perceptions of Asian American lawyers as competent and compliant “worker bees” rather than leaders.
By contrast, the personal characteristics conventionally associated with effective leadership received relatively low ratings in our surveys. The prototypical leader in many US professions is frequently identified as being “assertive,” signaling confidence, motivation, and conviction (Lu et al. 2020). Central to our justice system is the adversarial process, and the characteristics of being “aggressive” and “extroverted” are identified with leadership in the legal profession. In our surveys, consistent with the “worker bee” stereotype, the traits “assertive,” “extroverted,” and “aggressive” were each selected by fewer than 10 percent of respondents, and the traits “empathetic” and “creative” were each selected by roughly 20 percent of respondents. Being perceived as docile or passive was particularly pernicious for Asian American women, as our qualitative findings below indicate. Because the practice of law, especially in firms or practice groups that focus on litigation, has often been dominated by a culture that values aggression and assertiveness, those deemed to lack such characteristics are often overlooked as managers and leaders (McGinley 2012).
Several of our focus group participants commented on how they had to actively challenge the “worker bee” Asian stereotype to demonstrate they could be good managers and leaders. “The perception of me being a doer and not a manager was something I consistently had to push against, even though I was able to get the first non-lawyer promoted to a level manager director in the department,” remarked one in-house counsel. “I had to constantly demonstrate that I had managerial aspects of things in terms of human capital management, like managing transactions … you can do the substance, but can you do the people piece? And I felt like that’s something which goes into the model minority stereotype” (In-House FG5, Speaker 3, 15).
Given the pervasiveness of these stereotypes, some of our participants indicated that they had to disguise parts of their identity for fear of being deemed as not a good “fit” for the prevailing organizational culture. “Sometimes your identity holds you back because you feel like you must cover parts of yourself that are different in order to fit in. But it actually holds you back when people recognize there’s something culturally not right. Like they recognize you’re not being forthright” (Women FG2, Speaker 1, 9). This respondent, an Asian American woman, described how the “reticent” nature of Asian American lawyers was viewed as insufficiently “forthright” for the firm’s culture. This was one reason she believed that an Asian American colleague was not promoted to partner.
These stereotypes frequently reflect ascriptive characteristics rather than social or cultural upbringing, as recent research has shown (Nelson et al. 2019). One of our focus group participants, a woman of Korean ancestry who was adopted by a White family, expressed frustration with this type of racial bias:
I look Asian, but I didn’t grow up Asian, right? So … all the interactions that I get from other people are based solely on perception of who they think I am, not at all about who I am, because I grew up in White America with White parents, White cultural values. I don’t have any of that Asian cultural stuff that people talk about when they talk about sort of cultural values that maybe impact Asian Americans’ abilities to sort of, in the workplace, like I don’t have that, right? It’s all based on how other people see me. And so, I’m constantly facing other people’s perceptions of what an Asian woman is like, what they can and can’t do in terms of litigation, leadership, management, all of those things, and it’s all just solely based on my looks, and not at all based on any internal value system or cultural experience (Korean FG6, Speaker 2, 8).
This participant was not alone. Others reflected on how their upbringing did not always match racial identity. “My parents were White hippies, so they just wanted me to be happy,” remarked another Korean adoptee. “I also didn’t get a lot of career direction either. … We weren’t guided toward anything specific. But my dad’s a lawyer, so then I became a lawyer somehow” (Korean, FG6, Speaker 4, 14).
While these stereotypes were consistent across gender categories, Asian American women frequently reported being perceived as too passive or docile to be leaders or even effective lawyers. As other scholars have shown, the dominant cultural script in many aspects of the legal profession is that of a highly assertive male (Pierce 1996). These implicit rules and norms frequently compel women and other groups to conform to that script to succeed, especially in the adversarial field of litigation. “Throughout my career, people just assumed I was too passive to be a litigator, like I just didn’t have the skills to be a litigator, and they just assumed that as an Asian woman I would be submissive and passive and just not assertive enough,” one participant noted (Korean FG6, Speaker 2, 8).
Such cultural scripts or unwritten guidelines surfaced even in some of the most banal settings where the combination of race and gender seemed to influence social interactions. One female participant recounted:
I was at a deposition with a White partner and the opposing counsel; we were trying to order lunch. It was our deposition, and the opposing counsel was filling out the lunch form. And I just took it over from the opposing counsel and said, “I’ll run this.” Then I gave it to the hotel. And the White partner was like, “No.” After the deposition, he was like, “No, you cannot do this. I don’t ever want you to take lunch orders from the opposing counsel. They’re grown a— people, and they can do this. …” Sorry, excuse me. “They can do this themselves.” And that was seen as … maybe it was a racial moment for him. … Or gender, and he had a gender thing. Exactly. Where I’m an Asian woman, so I was catering to the needs of these other people that I was too nice and whatnot, but to me, I didn’t even register it that way. It was just something that I was taught to do that I’m going to [be a] considerate person who helps others (In-House FG5, Speaker 4, 13).
This interaction reveals a dilemma for Asian American women lawyers: conformity to a dominant cultural script is frowned on as lacking toughness or being too accommodating, while nonconformity can readily be perceived as lacking social grace or being rude. No clear script is available for Asian American women to demonstrate the requisite “people skills” essential for promotion and advancement.
Other female participants reported a similar type of shortsightedness when it came to how their White male colleagues perceived their legal skills, including during difficult negotiations. My colleagues “thought I wasn’t being aggressive enough in my negotiations with the counterparty,” one participant recounted. “Three White male directors had it in their head that I just … ‘She’s too docile and submissive,’ which was not the case.” Her superiors tried unsuccessfully to replace her with her male cocounsel. She concluded: “I’m fully convinced that if a White man had been the lawyer, and had taken the tack that I had taken, that it would not have been viewed as a move of weakness the way that they thought that they interpreted what I was doing” (Female Korean FG6, Speaker 6, 12–13).
To counter these perceptions, Asian American women lawyers reported being more self-conscious about asserting their professional status and role, yet even this did not always work. “When I go into court, when I go into a settlement conference, a mediation, I’m always having to think of what to do to take control, to assert myself, and to communicate that I’m the one in charge, or at least, I’m the attorney for this client,” one litigator noted. “But I’ve had to learn, I’ve had many experiences, in which people assume … people assume that I was the interpreter, a court reporter, assistant, even though I’m in full suit, and I’m standing right next to my client” (Female Vietnamese FG, Speaker 3, 9). Misidentifying and underestimating Asian American women were common themes among our participants. “Yeah, I constantly still get mistaken to be the court reporter, the translator, the paralegal when I walk into a courtroom,” remarked one respondent (Female Korean FG6, Speaker 2, 8). The expectation of Asians being more passive and less assertive appears to be more pronounced for Asian American women, confining them to cultural scripts that are not conducive to advancement and penalizing them for deviating from such scripts. Indeed, such stereotypes associated with Asian American women hinder recognition of their role as lawyers at all.
At the same time, Asian American women have reported that when they are assertive, they are often cast negatively as an overly aggressive “dragon lady” (Ramiro 2022; Gee et al. 2015). Whereas men displaying similar behavior are portrayed as powerful and confident, the “dragon lady” stereotype demeans Asian American women as haughty and overbearing. As one researcher has explained, Asian American women often face a no-win situation, even when attempting to exercise their agency: “They are either sweet and docile or Tiger Mom or Dragon Lady—and those are not favorable notions of what lawyers should be” (Chen 2022). These observations from the existing literature together with our findings underscore the importance of examining race and gender together when analyzing diversity and inclusion in the US workforce.
Perceptions of Discrimination
In addition to stereotypes and related barriers to professional advancement, Asian Americans, like other racial minorities and women, continue to face overt and implicit discrimination in the legal workforce. In recent years, some have contended that most workplace discrimination is limited to implicit bias and similar forms of subtle unequal treatment (Green 2007). Our findings suggest that Asian Americans experience both explicit and implicit workplace discrimination. The rise in anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic likely heightened awareness among our most recent participants. Still, the 2021 focus group data complement the survey findings and reinforce what other research has noted about the effects of perceived discrimination on the career trajectories of lawyers (Nelson et al. 2019).
Among our 2022 survey respondents, 41 percent perceived overt discrimination because of their race “sometimes,” “often,” or “very often”; among 2016 survey respondents, that figure was 30 percent. As for implicit bias, 64 percent of respondents in 2022 said they experienced such discrimination because of their race “sometimes,” “often,” or “very often”; compared to 58 percent in 2016. Moreover, there was no substantial difference in rates of perceived racial discrimination by ethnic categories, gender, or immigrant generation (Dang et al. 2022). Several factors may explain the increase in reported perceptions of discrimination from 2016 to 2022. The rise in anti-Asian sentiment and reported hate incidents, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, may have spread to the legal workplace or may have produced heightened sensitivities to stereotyping or discrimination. Greater social and political attention to racial injustice, especially in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd murder and subsequent protests, also may have led to increased awareness of discrimination. Relatedly, the heightened visibility of racial injustice may have encouraged more Asian Americans to feel empowered to report their experiences of discrimination. Indeed, our 2022 survey data shows that over the previous two years, respondents became more engaged in social and political issues and had a greater desire to change and improve society (Dang et al. 2022).
Regardless of the cause, the qualitative evidence illuminates the kinds of experiences that undergird such perceptions. Our focus groups revealed that such discrimination occurs at all different stages of the profession, from the recruitment of entry-level lawyers to experiences at some of the highest levels of the bar and bench. One junior associate at a litigation firm described his experience interviewing for a position: “In an interview for a summer associate position, the interviewer said ‘we are a very aggressive firm, and we do a lot of litigation. You are obviously an Asian person, and that’s not something that you all do. How would you deal with that?’ And I remember how incapable I was of thinking of anything to say because I was so offended—and I also wanted the job. I didn’t hate the comment enough to walk out” (Dang et al. 2022, 57).
Other focus group participants reported that prominent law firm leaders tasked with recruiting and staffing do not know how to treat Asian American candidates. “When I came to [my] firm, there was one woman partner who just refused to put Asian people on her cases,” recounted a Taiwanese American female partner. “For like seven years running, even if seven of our associates were Asian out of ten, she would always pick the three non-Asians.” She continued: “[The female partner] was head of recruiting and was like, ‘Are Asians counted?’ She sat me in a room with the partners and was like, ‘Are Asians minorities? Like, tell me straight.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, God.’ And this happened, right? At a big, progressive New York law firm. I would say a lot of partners don’t know if Asians are minorities. I was like, you’re head of recruiting, now?” (Women FG2, Speaker 1, 5). The status of Asian Americans as an “invisible” or “forgotten” minority continues to shape perceptions within the legal profession.
Explicit and implicit forms of discrimination were not limited to private practice. Asian American lawyers working in the public sector shared similar experiences. “For me being in government, I experienced way more racism, sexism, harassment, than anyone should have,” recounted a female Vietnamese American lawyer.
I was one of maybe three or four Asian attorneys out of a department with about 250 attorneys in that particular government agency. For a lot of people, I was the first Asian professional they had worked with. I would walk into a room; they would not think I am the attorney in the room. I was either the secretary or the admin assistant. So, there were all these questions tied to the fact that I was a young woman, I was Asian. And there would always be these comments about, ‘Oh, so have you been to Panda Express?’ I had a manager who called me ‘Oriental’ at some point (Vietnamese FG, Speaker 2, 8).
Other participants said they were told that their ascriptive traits were justifications for why they were not promoted. “I was passed over for a promotion that I felt I deserved and worked for. The reason I was given for not being promoted was that the position entailed a lot of interacting with the public and I ‘didn’t have the right face’ for the position” (Dang et al. 2022, 57).
More prominent in our focus group discussions was how unconscious bias manifested in the legal workplace. Numerous participants described colleagues repeatedly mistaking them for other Asian coworkers. “People at the firm were confusing me with the other Asian female associate and then when she left, another Asian female associate joined and then they confused me with her,” one female in-house attorney remarked (In-House FG5, Speaker 7, 15). Against the backdrop of claims that our society is or ought to be colorblind, many of our focus group participants reported that workplace colleagues could not see past their racial and gender identity to recognize their individuality.
Other respondents noted that while greater attention to diversity has led to some increased opportunities, it has brought with it a kind of “tokenism” that can be offensive and akin to explicit discrimination. One in-house antitrust litigator described such a situation:
I have found that in the workplace, my colleagues do not point out my racial identity or the fact that I’m a woman of color, except more recently where there have been initiatives by judges and courts to diversify panels, for example, in the selection of lead counsel for plaintiffs’ antitrust cases. … I, at my last firm, noticed that as I did more antitrust work and would occasionally try to get involved in some of the plaintiff’s side work, I would be told, “You can come, and you’ll be invited. We’ll put you on there because we need to have an Asian or we need to have diversity, or else we as a firm have nothing to contribute or we’re unlikely to get this leadership role.” And so, it felt very weird because I was expressly being told many times in pitches and the like and during meetings with other counsel that were trying to put together panels to be submitted to the court, that I would be included only because I was an Asian woman essentially. I knew that it was also that I had the goods, that I could do the work, but it’s strange because it’s the only time I’ve had anyone comment on and explicitly tell me, “You’re included only because of the way you looked and the boxes that you check.” (In-House FG5, Speaker 8, 17-18)
Participants also reported experiencing discrimination through acts of professional disrespect. Again, the intersectionality of race and gender was evident in the treatment of some of the profession’s top members. One female respondent said: “As a judge, as a woman on the bench, I get sassed a lot more than my male colleagues do. [On one occasion,] I was saying ‘Well, counsel, I have this question,’ [and the lawyer I was addressing] said, ‘No, you wait until I’m finished.’ It was like, ‘No. No. I’m sorry. Last time I checked, I was the judge. And so, I get to decide who speaks when’” (Dang et al. 2022, 57).
Several focus group participants described strategies they developed to navigate racial and gender challenges in the legal workplace. As other scholars have shown (Huang 2020), Asian Americans who had relied earlier in their lives on ethnic networks to achieve educational success frequently lacked the career advice and professional connections needed to advance in non-STEM career fields. When they were unable to find supportive mentors or sponsors, they sought social solidarity from peers. “What I have found is, in my career, it’s not necessarily mentors that have helped me,” remarked one participant. “It was more of having friends that were empathetic, and that shared similar values” (Vietnamese FG, Speaker 2, 13).
Despite these workplace challenges, Asian American lawyers are generally satisfied with their decision to become lawyers. The ABF’s AJD study has demonstrated that approximately three-quarters of Asian American lawyers, like other racial minorities, reported being “moderately” or “extremely satisfied” with their occupational choices (Nelson et al. 2023). The level of career satisfaction among Asian Americans is lower than other racial groups, including White respondents, but overall Asians appear content that they became lawyers.16 Nevertheless, our 2022 survey shows notable variation in satisfaction among Asian Americans by practice setting. Whereas over 80 percent of respondents in academia and 70 percent of judges said they were “very satisfied” with their current employment, less than 35 percent of big law firm attorneys, prosecutors, and public defenders expressed the same level of satisfaction. In between, a majority of federal government lawyers (55 percent), solo practitioners (53 percent), and small law firm attorneys (53 percent), as well as half of public interest legal professionals (50 percent) reported being “very satisfied” with their current employment (Dang et al. 2022, 47).
CONCLUSION
Although Asian Americans have been the fastest-growing racial group entering US law schools and the legal profession in recent decades, they remain underrepresented at the highest levels of leadership, particularly at law firms. Building on the existing literature on the bamboo ceiling, this article synthesizes quantitative survey data with original focus group qualitative evidence to explore the disparity between the large number of entry-level Asian American legal professionals and the comparatively small number in leadership roles.
Our study presents three principal findings. First, Asian Americans share with other racial minorities and women some of the same barriers to advancement in the legal profession, such as lack of formal leadership training, inadequate access to mentors and networks, and lack of recognition for their work. Second, our study participants reported facing unique obstacles related to social stereotypes about Asians. They noted that others in the profession ascribe to them traits not typically associated with leadership. Finally, our study finds that a substantial majority of Asian American lawyers in our surveys reported continued overt and implicit discrimination in the legal workplace. Such perceived bias cuts across the profession, from recruitment to staffing to everyday treatment of Asian American colleagues in the profession, particularly for Asian American women.
Our findings contribute to the evidence base for considering what policies or practices might mitigate challenges that hinder the advancement of Asian American lawyers. In the wake of acute national attention to issues of racial justice in 2020, many organizations, including law firms, pledged new or expanded efforts to combat racism and promote equity. These efforts included establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and initiatives, as well as continuing practices such as implicit bias training and anti-harassment training. After the presidential election of 2024, and even before, many of these efforts have been rolled back and, in some organizations, eliminated. While our study does not address the efficacy of such initiatives, it does suggest that Asian American lawyers’ experiences of stereotyping and discrimination are harmful and real, and are unlikely to be remedied by simply purging law firms of DEI efforts or terminology.
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that many DEI initiatives have not proceeded from a firm evidence base as to what policies or practices actually work. As a result, they have been criticized as performative, “woke,” or merely virtue-signaling, and in some cases shown to be ineffective or even counterproductive (Kalev and Dobbin 2024; Paluck et al. 2021). To the extent that organizational leaders remain committed to ensuring a fair and equitable workplace, the current climate of skepticism toward DEI initiatives should motivate organizations, especially well-resourced organizations like large law firms, to undertake rigorous research and evaluation efforts to learn and document what works and what does not before implementing policies or initiatives at a larger scale.
Robust and reliable data collection is crucial to such efforts. The genesis of this study, dating back to our 2016 survey, was a realization that there were no comprehensive data at the time on the progress of Asian Americans in the legal profession. The largely descriptive nature of our research has sought to remedy the invisibility of Asian American lawyers’ experiences. By providing a systematic and textured account of those experiences through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, our study gives shape and content to workplace challenges and inequities and makes them more difficult for decision-makers to overlook or ignore. As the adage goes, “what gets measured gets managed.” Organizations such as the American Bar Association, NALP, Law360, and Minority Corporate Counsel Association have contributed significantly to our understanding of these issues by compiling and maintaining important data series across the profession, and our hope is that those efforts will continue. At the level of individual firms and legal organizations, an important question to ask is what data these groups collect to measure progress or to monitor the efficacy of its policies and practices.
In sum, our research contributes to the growing literature on the bamboo ceiling by documenting how Asian American lawyers have faced the challenges of cultural biases, negative social stereotypes, and workplace dynamics that limit their leadership opportunities. By promoting greater awareness of these challenges, we contribute to debunking the model minority myth that occludes recognition of the barriers to greater inclusion of Asian Americans in a profession that is essential to a well-functioning democracy.
FOOTNOTES
↵1. Throughout this paper, we use the terms Asian American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Asian in accordance with their usage by cited sources. The terms are not necessarily interchangeable and may reflect variation in the included subgroups. For example, the term Asian may include foreign nationals, and Asian American sometimes but not always includes Pacific Islanders. For other racial groups, we similarly rely on the terminology used by cited sources.
↵2. In 2024, the proportion of Asian Americans in law schools (9.5 percent) was slightly higher than in the general US population (7 percent) (Krinsky 2024; Im 2025).
↵3. In 2020, 65 percent of Asian law school graduates obtained jobs in private practice, compared with 46 percent of African American graduates, 58 percent of Latinx graduates, and 57 percent of White graduates (NALP 2021).
↵4. In a 2019 survey, Asian Americans comprised 10 percent of attorneys who left their firms that year. By contrast, African Americans left at a rate of 6 percent and Latinx at a rate of 5 percent (Vault/MCCA 2020).
↵5. In 2020, the share of associates who were AAPI was three times the share of partners who were AAPI; the ratio was approximately 2:1 for African American and Latinx attorneys, and less than 1:1 for Whites (MCCA 2021).
↵6. The most recent National Association for Law Placement (NALP) report indicates that in 2024 White men still dominated the ranks of partnership; 24.8 percent of equity partners were women, and 10.2 percent were people of color (NALP 2025).
↵7. For a full list of the financial sponsors and other supporters of this research, please see the ABF website page for this project (American Bar Foundation, n.d.).
↵8. In using NAPABA’s professional network to conduct the two surveys, we acknowledge that our sample is likely to be skewed. Because respondents were all NAPABA members, they likely have a stronger interest in Asian American identity or more strongly value the opportunities afforded by Asian American affinity groups than the overall population of Asian American lawyers.
↵9. All online appendix material can be accessed at https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/12/3/211/tab-supplemental. The survey was distributed via two separate emails in July and August 2016 to 1,951 individual NAPABA members, with 600 respondents completing the survey. There is no detailed data on how many of the 1,951 individuals might have opened the email but not taken the survey.
↵10. The ethnic and gender composition of our survey respondents is roughly representative of NAPABA’s broader 2022 membership, with approximately similar subgroup composition in both NAPABA membership and our survey respondents. The gender comparison is nearly identical. In this sense, our survey follows the best practices for survey research (American Association for Public Opinion Research 2025).
↵11. For more details on the composition of the 2016 survey respondents, see Eric Chung and colleagues (2017, 7).
↵12. This survey was delivered via three separate emails in March, April, and May 2022 to 9,956 individual NAPABA members. A maximum of 4,672 individuals opened the email, and a total of roughly 1,032 clicked on the survey. To be conservative, we have used the maximum number of individuals opening the email as our denominator for the response rate, leading to a 15 percent rate (700 of 4,672). If one uses the number of individuals that clicked on the survey as a denominator, our response rate is roughly 68 percent (700 of 1,032). For more on the declining response rates of online surveys distributed via email and the accompanying challenges, see generally Amany Saleh and Krishna Bista (2017); M. Siva Durga Prasad Nayak and K. A. Narayan (2019).
↵13. The second report contains more detailed information on the birth and immigration status of the second survey’s respondents, see Tyler Dang and colleagues (2022).
↵14. For more details on the composition of the 2022 survey respondents, see Dang and colleagues (2022, 9).
↵15. The research team consisted of the authors and a team of graduate research assistants. The authors moderated the first few focus groups to model neutral and nonjudgmental facilitation, and then the graduate research assistants conducted the remaining focus groups.
↵16. Across the AJD’s three waves of data collection, 75 percent of Asian American respondents on average were “moderately” or “extremely satisfied” with their decision to become lawyers. The comparable average figure across the three waves for African Americans was 80 percent, for Latinx lawyers it was 81 percent, for Native Americans it was 75 percent, and for Whites it was 77 percent (Nelson et al. 2023, table 14.1).
- © 2026 Russell Sage Foundation. Chien, Shih-Chun “Steven,” Goodwin Liu, and Ajay K. Mehrotra. 2026. “The ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ in Law: Asian American Perceptions of Inequality in the Legal Profession.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 12(3): 211–33. https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2026.12.3.10. We thank the RSF conference organizers and coeditors of this issue as well as the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and feedback. We are grateful to many friends and colleagues for their comments and discussions, including Swethaa Ballakrishnen, Meghan Dawe, Bryant Garth, Maureen Gelwicks, Jerry Kang, Benji Lu, Priya Purandare, Carole Silver, and Albert Yoon. We also benefited enormously from the research assistance of Tyler Dang, Katherine Fang, Benji Lu, Michael Tayag, Minji Kim, and Ethan Chen. Funding for this research was provided by the American Bar Foundation, the American Bar Endowment, the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Faculty Research Program, and several other organizations. Direct correspondence to: Ajay K. Mehrotra, at ajay.mehrotra{at}law.northwestern.edu, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, 375 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611, United States.
Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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