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different political views, I have very different social views. And I'm certainly not going to start playing golf." But Yusra Siddiquee did get the job and says she's never been happier. She is now a partner at Ogilvy Renault LLP and one of five Muslim lawyers in the last three years who've become partners at Bay Street firms. remarkable change in the face, literally, of those who practise law. Siddiquee, who is acting chairwoman of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, says in the last 13 years or so, the organization went from 10 members to more than 200, the largest group being articling and law school students. Similarly, the South Asian Bar Association has more than 150 members, "representing pretty much all dimensions of the legal profes- sion," according to its president Ron Choudhury, an associate at Aird & Berlis LLP in Toronto. In just the Greater Toronto Area, there are groups representing lawyers from a variety of ethnic, religious, and other diverse communities, among them the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers, the sexual orientation and gender issues committees of the Ontario and Canadian bar associa- tions, and the Indigenous Bar Association for Indian, Inuit, and Métis trained in the law. According to the 2006 census, more than 16 per cent of B Canadians were members of a visible minority group. In 1981, when data for the employment equity-designated groups were Diversity survey of in-house counsel conducted a short survey of in-house counsel on the issue of diversity. We received about 50 responses to the poll. It is noteworthy that even though many companies do not ask for diversity information yet in their requests for proposals, almost 70 per cent of respondents indicated they would be inter- ested in having data on the demographic makeup of Canadian law firms. Does your company have a diversity policy? 52% Yes No Do not know 10% Is it important to your company that its suppliers also reflect the makeup of your company? Yes No Yes No 34.7% 65.3% Does your company ask for information on diversity in its RFPs? 17% Response count: 17 83% Would you be interested in having a resource that provided data on diversity in Canadian law firms? Yes No 69.4% 30.6% 28 OC T O BER 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com 38% oth of these stories reflect the shift taking place across the Canadian legal landscape. The last decade has seen a first derived, the estimated 1.1 million visible minorities rep- resented 4.7 per cent of Canada's total population. The visible minority population further increased to 3.2 million in 1996, or 11.2 per cent of the total population. Between 2001 and 2006, the visible minority population increased at a much faster pace than the total population. Its growth rate was 27.2 per cent, five times faster than the 5.4-per-cent increase for the population as a whole. And those numbers don't even include Aboriginal Peoples, gays or lesbians, or disabled persons. While society is changing rapidly, the profession is not morphing quite as fast. "We are so behind in global sensitivity," says Vern Krishna, the first, and so far only, South Asian treasurer of the LSUC. "We are not trailblazers." Jason Leung, president of the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers, says: "I'm starting to see more and more Asian Canadians becoming partners in law firms of all different sizes. But that being said, certainly the percentage of Asian lawyers who are partners is not even close to being representative of what's in the general population. . . . [P]robably about roughly one fifth of the population is Asian in Toronto and certainly there is much less than one fifth of partners in most law firms are Asian." Others echo Leung's sentiments about the small numbers of equity-seeking lawyers in the top levels of law firms. Frank Walwyn, president of CABL, estimates there are no more than a dozen black partners on Bay Street. Naiomi Metallic, a Mi'kmaq lawyer who is part of Eastern Door in Nova Scotia, says in that province she knows of only two aboriginal lawyers in private practice; she is one of them. Choudhury, who is of Indian descent, says young lawyers may say to themselves: "'I don't notice people who have an accent in these [large] law firms. And would it have been easier for me to work in a smaller law firm in Brampton? Probably because, the clients would be similar to me.' I'm not saying that they don't do that, but often times you might also find people going there because that's where they're welcomed." The number of law firms serving particular communities, be they ethnic, religious, or in any other niche is increasing (see Law Office Management, page 19). Anecdotally, the numbers of lawyers from equity-seeking groups have gone up quite dramatically in government (due largely to equity legislation) and in the corporate world (due to the growing number of companies with robust equity and diversity initiatives). Private practice generally lags behind. In a by-no-means-scientific poll, Canadian Lawyer asked more than 100 law firms across the country if they had equity and/or diversity initiatives. About 15 responded but only a handful reported having diversity initia- tives; a few more had equity policies but no specific diversity initiatives. Until recently, women have been the focus of most research and equity initiatives in the profession. Only in the last few years have broader diversity committees sprung up. ON THE BANDWAGON lake Cassels & Graydon LLP is one of the firms that hopped on the diversity bandwagon earliest, in the late 1990s. It set up a formal diversity and equity committee in 2000 and for B C anadian L a w y er