033: Tiffany & Elisa
Law is the least diverse profession in the nation. In this episode, we’re joined by Elisa Dun, a lawyer & diversity leader, to discuss why diverse representation is needed to change society and create policy reform.
We discussed:
Checking in on the rise in anti-Asian hate
The state of DEI in the legal profession
Why representation is important
Why Elisa transitioned from law to DEI
What we need to do to make the legal field more accessible
Elisa’s legal highlights
How we can help diversify the legal profession
Show notes:
Law is the least diverse profession in the nation. And lawyers aren’t doing enough to change that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/27/law-is-the-least-diverse-profession-in-the-nation-and-lawyers-arent-doing-enough-to-change-that/
Representation of Women and Minority Equity Partners Among Partners Little Changed in Recent Years: https://www.nalp.org/0419research
Mansfield Rule: https://www.diversitylab.com/mansfield-rule-4-0/
SEO Law: https://www.seo-usa.org/law/
Top 10 Famous Figures Who Failed The Bar Exam: https://testmaxprep.com/blog/bar-exam/top-10-famous-figures-who-failed-the-bar-exam-barmax-mpre-review
Diversity Lab: https://www.diversitylab.com/
About Elisa Dun
Elisa Dun is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is passionate about creating greater diversity in the legal industry (as well as in other professional fields). She currently serves as the Project Specialist for Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) Law, which aims to increase diversity in the legal industry. Prior to her time at SEO Law, Elisa worked at the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where she was an active member of the firm's Asian Pacific American Heritage affinity group and helped recruit diverse candidates for the firm. She also volunteered at the New York City Bar Association's Diversity Pipeline Initiative Committee, where she helped organize the Association's 2019 Launching Your Career series, which aimed to help underrepresented students and young professionals in the city access a career in law. Elisa holds a Diversity and Inclusion Certificate from Cornell University and is certified as an Associate Professional in Human Resources.
Follow Elisa Dun
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-dun/
Transcript
Tiffany Yu: Hi, everyone. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu the podcast. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. If you're new to this podcast, Tiffany & Yu is a podcast about things that matter. And more specifically, I'm talking to friends who are using their platforms and their voices to cultivate creativity, compassion, and change. Today I have with me a long time friend, we've known each other for more than 10 years, Elisa Dun. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a diversity, equity and inclusion professional. Hi Elisa.
Elisa Dun: Hi everyone. So nice to be here. Thank you so much, Tiffany, for having me on.
Tiffany Yu: I think we met in 2009 when we were still students at Georgetown. And you were one of my residents because I was a resident assistant.
Elisa Dun: Yeah, that's right. That's right. And, I think you had the great idea of Diversability even back then?
Tiffany Yu: Elisa was one of our founding members. I'd love to hear more about, if you can remember back to seeing those flyers around campus with a random logo and a random email address and that decision to reach out.
Elisa Dun: So, this touches a little bit into my personal experience at Georgetown. I was going through a really tough time, dealing with the onset of a physical disorder. And I felt that there was kind of a gap in inclusivity and belonging, but also, and this is what I learned from you, Tiffany, is that, diversity also includes disability. So we talk about demographic things such as race and gender, and even where you're from. Are you from an urban background or did you grow up in a rural background? But also just learning from you and learning this early on in my career that diversity really includes differently abled voices. And so joining Diversability with you was one of the highlights of my college experiences. I got to feel that I had a community and I got to feel that I had a lot of unique perspectives to bring someone who is just being diagnosed with a disorder and just learning what it meant and changing the way I had to navigate the world.
Tiffany Yu: I love that. I can talk about Diversability all day long. So to see it's very humble beginnings back in 2009. I look back at how, even as your RA, we weren't really that engaged. And then for you to start getting involved in Diversability and really exploring what your own identity and your story looked like in the context of the formation and the relentless energy we had to turn this club into something was really powerful. So I'm excited that you were introduced to our community back then. And since then we've had a couple of touch points. You then went on to Harvard Law School and hosted me while you were at Harvard Law and then, even most recently, you ended up hosting an event around finding a job during the pandemic . I do want to first check in around recent news that has been happening around the rise in anti-Asian violence. I have been thinking a lot more thoughtfully around using this platform to amplify more Asian voices.
Elisa Dun: So I've also been doing a lot of discussions and research. And so one thing is that, and this is just my personal opinion, but the Asian American community, it has different compartments. So it's in different silos and that's because of course Asian, when we talk about Asian, that's so many different races and so many different languages and cultures. I'm a glass half full person. And so despite the horrific trauma that our community is going through, one thing that I have felt from this experience is a sense of Asian American pride and a sense of community. And this is something that, we talk about disability and diversity, but also race and diversity. I just felt that I never really embraced my race. I never embraced my culture and it was kind of like, Oh, but my name is very white. So I try to cover my identity, but for me, this hate against Asian Americans, while horrific, for me personally, the silver lining is that I'm able to have more pride in my own identity and reach out to other Asian Americans who I might've before found different for me, such as a Filipino American or a Vietnamese American. Now suddenly I feel that sense of community and comradery with them. And so that's one thing that I do appreciate about the reaction in the Asian American community. Of the many horrific things that are happening, that's one thing that I do really appreciate.
Tiffany Yu: I appreciate you touching on your own identity. And I think so much of that actually does resonate with me as well. And even in my disability work, I had never really thought about putting a spotlight on or thinking about what it meant to be Asian in the context of my own disability work. One of my learnings from this whole process has been not only my own erasure, but knowing that the way I felt about the erasure of my race is not atypical in our community.
Elisa Dun: I was reading an article the other day about how Asian Americans, and I felt this myself, we don't want to take up space. We don't want to interrupt others by saying, Hey, we're dealing with trauma as well in our community, but I'm finding that it's okay to take up that space. It's okay to say, I am an Asian American and this is how I feel. So just getting that confidence and being able to speak from that racial perspective is something that I'm coming into. And despite having lived in America for so long, it's like, I never really identified as being Asian American, but now suddenly it's like, okay, I actually do have all these experiences and I've just never plugged into it, kind of like what you were saying, Tiffany, about that erasure of our own identity. So it's a learning experience and I'm coming into it, I think.
Tiffany Yu: We're all learning together. So I want to shift the conversation. So you are super passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. And the context of this conversation is, you were a lawyer and now you're on this mission to really see more diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal field. Can you talk about what the state of DEI in the legal field looks like right now?
Elisa Dun: The state is dire, but as I mentioned, I'm a glass half full person, a silver lining person. So, but let me start out with the dire statistics. So in 2015, Washington Post published an article and it said the legal profession is literally the least diverse profession in the entire nation, more so than banking or media. And that just tells you how dire the situation is. With regards to major and large law firms, less than 2% of the law firm partners in these large law firms are African Americans. And, this is actually the less than 2% of law firm partners being black and African American, that's actually the same rough percentage as 10 years ago. So that just shows you how hard it has been to make a change in this industry. Other statistics are one in five equity partners are women. So that's 19.6%. And that's been about the same ever since I entered into the legal industry in 2016. That 19% number really hasn't moved. Every year, they announce in our diversity committees, the new partnership class and every year it's about hovering around that 19%. So some dire statistics and the reality is that there's a lot of work to do. But as I said, I'll end this with a silver lining, which is that a lot of law firms care, and a lot of law firms are trying to make a difference. Several law firms have banded together to form a racial justice committee. There's something called the Mansfield Rule, which is signed on by 117 major law firms. And they're saying that they're going to commit to at least 30% of their partnership class as well as their associate class being women, attorneys of color, or LGBTQ+ attorneys. So, it's a dire situation, but I think a lot of law firms are trying to do better and are slowly taking the steps to do better.
Tiffany Yu: Thank you for sharing all those statistics. I can't wait to dig more into them. And so you and I both live here in San Francisco and we're at the epicenter of tech, which also has its own diversity issues as all industries do, but to learn that law is the least diverse. So much of what we talk about is, we talk about systemic racism. We talk about systemic ableism. And you've said that law has the power to change society and implement reform. And so if we're not represented in this arena where policy change is happening. Can you talk about why it's important to have representation in this field?
Elisa Dun: So one is I think exactly what you said is that law has the ability to make a difference. So if you're looking at criminal justice reform, if you're looking at immigration reform. So just taking, for example, immigration reform. There are a number of laws that say, for example, that it's illegal to drop water in certain territories around the border, because that's constituted as littering, federally. And so it's a federal crime to just put a bottle of water on the ground. And that obviously would help the migrants coming in and migrating over to survive another day. But suddenly this littering is, giving waters called littering, which is now a federal crime. So this just gives an example of how law can actually make a difference. Things we are criminalizing, things we are deciding is a crime, is a felony versus a misdemeanor. All of this starts with the law. And then of course, how we implement it. And then of course, how we adjudicate it. So a lot of it comes from the law and what I think our country needs really is systematic reform in these laws. So in criminal justice, in immigration law, and the way we do that, the way I've been able to do that is work within the framework of these laws that are racist, that have systematic injustice. But I think what we actually need to do is overhaul the system. And so we need more diverse attorneys to overhaul that system completely.
Tiffany Yu: Thanks for sharing. Let's take a break here. And then when we come back, we will continue chatting with Elisa about how we can change the system.
Elisa Dun: Awesome.
Tiffany Yu: And we are back from the break here. We're chatting with Elisa Dun, who is a diversity, equity and inclusion professional. I knew her as a Georgetown student. She then went on to graduate from Harvard Law School. You were working as a lawyer. You were in the practice for a few years, saw that there was this lack of representation, which you've highlighted before the break. What made you decide to make that transition to come out of the legal practice and move into diversity, equity and inclusion for this field?
Elisa Dun: So I think the reason I went into the field of law was to have that ability to make a positive impact, like what we were talking before. You can write the laws and you can make a positive change. What I realized midway through, in law school as well as in practicing at law firms, is that I'm very much a people person. I love working with people. I love work culture. So in terms of personal interest, I'm very interested in learning how we can enhance the law firm culture. And then on another personal level, I think that, especially growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, and entering into fields like humanities, I felt that those fields in my childhood background were very diverse in terms of race and gender identities. But when I went into the law field, it was I think one of the first times that I experienced both explicit and very, very obvious implicit bias. I was told things like, you probably don't have any attorneys in your family by a law firm partner who that was her first time meeting me. I was asked by a partner, should I take off my shoes before I walk into your office because is this an Asian office? And so those are the things I just had never experienced before, but as I was grappling with those experiences and talking with other attorneys of color, I realized that this was kind of a systematic issue, that this was not an isolated experience, but something that others had experienced as well. And so I took a lot of self exploration and trying to learn, what does this mean to me? What does this make me feel? And again, being that half glass full person, I'm like, okay, well, what change can I make? Because if I assume everyone is well-intentioned, they want to do better. They didn't mean to say that racist statement. And that might be a bit of a, who knows if that's true, but I realized that I can make a change. And so I started to work with an organization called Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, SEO, in their law department. And what we do is we train law school applicants in their law school application materials, and then we also place diverse law school candidates in law firms. So really focusing on that diversity pipeline, because I always think no one should ever have to experience what I experienced. And so the way to make that is to have a tidal wave of diverse attorneys and candidates coming into the law firm to change the demographics that I pointed out in the beginning that are so upsetting and to just make sure that there's more diversity. So kind of more from a personal interest on organizational culture, but also, that personal experience of having received, been on the back end and the receiving end of discriminatory statements and situations.
Tiffany Yu: And what you're highlighting, those are really microaggressions and one of the things I'm learning is, the thing with microaggressions is that what matters more is the impact and the outcome. And so if you're getting statements like that all the time, it becomes the phrase that's like death by a thousand cuts. It starts to wear on you a little bit. Before the break you were chatting about this needs to be systems change. What can we do to make the legal field more accessible?
Elisa Dun: If I'm talking to attorneys, any attorneys listening in, what I think attorneys can really easily do is, if they get a LinkedIn request from a student to touch base and kind of pick their brain on either a law school they went to or a law firm they work at, or just any tips in general, I say, take that call. We need more mentors. Sign up for mentorship programs. Just be that ally and help others. With regards to those who are interested in the legal field, but have not yet entered the legal field, I understand, I was there as well, first-generation law school student and graduate. And I understand how complicated the law school application cycle can be. What does a resume for a law school look like? What should my personal statement look like? I would start Googling and I'll start with my own organization, SEO Law. They have a number of webinars each year and workshops that really focus on how to attack that law school application. And then the third piece of advice, besides mentoring or reaching out to mentors and attending webinars to learn how to apply to law schools, is I think that people, a lot of students, are daunted by the LSAT and with good reason. It is a very difficult exam. As a side note over the weekend, I went to Barnes and Nobles and picked up an LSAT book thinking, I rocked this once, I can rock it again. I looked at one question and just like, my eyes started crossing and I put the book away. It is a hard exam. But a lot of applicants, especially diverse applicants come into it thinking, Oh, my LSAT score is only this or only that. I'll never make it to Harvard Law School. And then they look online, they research Harvard or Stanford or Yale. They look at their LSAT reported median and they're like, no way can I meet this. I'm not even going to apply. But you can't win a game you don't join. And so what I tell students is that that's a median score, half are below, half are above, and they take students with low scores all the time. So just at least apply. I use the LSAT as an example, but generally, the need to be very confident in your abilities. And if you don't succeed your first cycle, try again a second cycle, try applying a second year. But basically to not give up on yourself and to continue to garner your self-confidence and reach for the legal industry, because we need more people like you.
Tiffany Yu: I think you did transfer, partway through for law school.
Elisa Dun: Well, so I transferred from undergrad. I went to NYU and then I went to Georgetown, which is where I met you. That's actually a good point because I have a lot of friends from Harvard Law who transferred as well. And, they went to a wide variety of schools and ended up at Harvard. So that persistent confidence in yourself is incredibly important even after your first year of law school.
Tiffany Yu: You, Elisa, were one of a few people who went to law school and I felt like really loved it. I think the counting ourselves out of opportunities, is that a consistent theme that you see with the people who come through SEO? What are some of the barriers that BIPOC attorneys and law students, not only face along the entire process of the beginning point of deciding to apply to law school, to then being in the profession? I just feel like there are a lot of barriers.
Elisa Dun: I think from the very first day they decide if law is it for them. They decided, but then it's like, how do I go about it? And a lot of first gen attorneys or law students, there's no guidebook. Someone needs to come up with a manual, like here are the steps on how to apply to law school and here's what you should do. Because it's not the same for undergrad. And it's much more complex than other schools. So that's one barrier is just not knowing literally a single attorney in your life. And that's why I think the cold reaching out to LinkedIn attorneys, doing cold searches online and reaching out to them is really a good idea. Of course, be gracious and appreciative of their time. And then I think the other roadblocks, I actually think the LSAT is a bit of a roadblock. We can talk about discriminatory exams. This is probably one of them, LSAC is becoming aware of it. But until we can beat the system, we got to work with it. So just doing your best on the LSAT examination and if possible enrolling in a course. I understand that's not in everyone's financial abilities, but I think a course, which is what I did really made a difference. I think in law school, one of the greatest barriers was, I think exactly what you said Tiffany, is counting ourselves out, whether it's because other people are counting ourselves out or thinking that we're maybe not as smart as them because of the way we look or our background. Whether it's external or internal, it's that self-confidence issue, that imposter syndrome issue. And, the truth is, attorneys make mistakes all the time. So I think Hillary Clinton didn't even pass the bar examination her first time around, Michelle Obama as well. If you make a mistake in class, and mistakes are very public in law school, because we do a Socratic seminar method, don't necessarily dwell on it. It's okay. Everyone's just thinking about their own mistakes. But then you asked about law firms as well. And then that's the last stage. So I think with law firms is just having that general lack of diversity. There just isn't that many of us, and that can be the hardest thing. So that's something that those are the many barriers throughout the life cycle of a law school applicant to a law firm attorney that we face.
Tiffany Yu: You have the stereotypes and then you have the exceptions to the stereotypes, but it's also hard. I mean, we just have to totally dismantle this whole idea around making one identity group a monolith. When we have these exceptions, the person who made it into SEO Law, who is then the one person of color at their law firm is that when you are an exception, you don't have the space to fail. So when you're talking about the Socratic method and the fact that all of this is visible, as a person of color, it just hurts a little bit more. Do you see that reflected?
Elisa Dun: Yeah, I do. Actually I do. And no one ever says, I judge this person harshly, more harshly because they're a person of color, but there are definitely, of course, is that underlying idea of that, if you make a mistake in class, it's not just embarrassing. You don't just want to crawl into a hole and die, but also now people don't think you're as smart. And intellectual ability is highly prized by attorneys. It's highly prized by law students. It feels like if you say one thing incorrectly, if you got the holding of a case wrong, then everyone is like, Oh, and you might actually sometimes hear that everyone goes, Oh, if you say something wrong, which is just annoying. And I wish people would just stopped doing that. But I say everyone's focused more on themselves and everyone is more worried about their performance. So even if you hear that gasp from every, like 79 people, if you've got an answer wrong, literally it happens to all of us. It's okay. So that stereotype and being the exception to that stereotype is extra pressure.
Tiffany Yu: And it gets internalized too. I think that's the hardest part. I mean, that's why I appreciated you talking about the mindset. We started this conversation by saying, the legal field is where things change, where we see policy reform. Did you get a chance to work on anything that made you feel really good to pursue this for a career for a period of time?
Elisa Dun: Absolutely. And kind of going back to what I said earlier, I entered it into the legal field to make an impact, to have the tools to make a impact and ripple effect in the world. And so one thing that I'm really proud of, a couple of things, was that, as an attorney in a law firm, I could do pro bono work. So I was able to secure asylum for two women, one was a transgender woman from Africa and another was a Pakistani Shia journalist. For both of those, I use my international cultural and language skills to help them achieve asylum. So that's one thing I'm really proud of. In law school, I was also a part of a domestic violence legal aid clinic. And for that, well, one, I was able to stop an international kidnapping by a violent ex-husband. And then another is that I was able to secure a judgment of a quarter of a million dollars for one of my clients who was a domestic violence victim. So, this just shows that I think that if you do enter into the legal field, you can do a lot to change what you don't like about the world. Look at it and then law can definitely help you make a change in that industry. And with regards to the entire industry and diversity in general, I'm really encouraged. Even just a couple of years ago, the Mansfield Rule that I mentioned earlier where law firms commit to have their partnership class be 30% diverse attorneys, that didn't exist just five years ago. And so law firms are really interested in increasing their diversity. So that's one thing that I'm also incredibly proud of that all of us as a group in this industry are moving forward together.
Tiffany Yu: Even if the progress is slower than we'd like, the change is happening. Well, congrats on those wins. And we have spent some time on this podcast talking about how to make advocacy and activism more accessible, meeting people where they are. This legal field is really where things change. I think I really appreciated this perspective because it brought in a different level of advocacy than some of the other people who are more grassroots, community building on the ground, showing up at protests and other things like that. And I always want to provide our listeners different ways that they can make an impact. For those who are listening and not in the legal field and may be very set in their career, is there anything that we can do to help shine a light on. I didn't know that the legal field was the least diverse of all industries, to really highlight some of the data or initiatives that are out there? Is it following and donating to SEO? What would you recommend for those of us who sit outside of the field?
Elisa Dun: I think that donating to SEO Law would be very great. We look at our donors every year and there's a number of individual donors to our program. And I think that, that's one thing that the diversity pipeline needs to start earlier. You can't improve someone's LSAT score unless you also give them the room to grow and advance their reading comprehension skills. So we go back further into the diversity pipeline to help with that. So that's one thing you can do. I think that, the Diversity Lab is another great organization. They actually came up with the Mansfield Rule during a women's hackathon that they had, I think in 2016 or 17. So that's another organization that you can look into and follow on social media, LinkedIn, for example. I don't know if they take donations, but I can't imagine that they would say no. Some other ideas are just following law schools on LinkedIn, because a lot of them finally are paying attention to diversity. And so you'll get to learn what their programs are. A lot of them have actually launched diversity pipeline programs of their own. So that's one thing that I would look into as well.
Tiffany Yu: One thing that you have mentioned throughout this conversation, but I'm hearing reiterated again, is how the pipeline starts much earlier than we think. So how can we raise our kids to be able to dream to have whatever career they want? If they want to be a Supreme Court Justice. I feel like that's a lot of kids, and maybe we saw the documentary with RBG or the documentaries. But I think giving kids the space to be able to dream and not count themselves out of those opportunities before they've even had a chance to try. So I think that's a really great message to close on. And the last question I always ask my guests is what are you grateful for today?
Elisa Dun: Ooh, what am I grateful for today? I think that I'm grateful for my friends, my boyfriend and my family. I talk a lot about confidence issue and one thing I've started to do, because I realized that self-confidence is a big issue for me. I'm starting to do a weekly journal where I list the three things I'm proud of. So even if it's just, I exercise three times this week, or I contributed some really great idea in a meeting. That's something that I've started to do. But that's just personal, what I do on my own. But with my friends, as I navigated this career switch from being a practicing attorney to the DEI space, they were my village. Whenever I'm like, Oh, that thing I did wasn't great, my boyfriend's the first to be like, actually I think it was good and here's why. So I'm grateful for my friends and family and boyfriend, just because they are my village of support and confidence. And they have confidence in me, even when I lack confidence in myself.
Tiffany Yu: Having a strong support system is so important. If our listeners want to follow you or support you, where's the best place to do that?
Elisa Dun: You can find me on LinkedIn, just that first name, ELISA, and then last name Dun, D U N. And just connect with me. I know some people are strict on who they accept on LinkedIn requests. I'm not super strict, so I'll pretty much accept anyone who is not a bot, who is not a robot or whatever. So feel free to follow me there.
Tiffany Yu: Thanks Elisa. And I can't wait to see this next generation of lawyers come in and hopefully it looks like you and me and a lot of other people too.
Elisa Dun: Thanks so much for having me on this podcast, Tiffany. I really enjoyed it.