"On Being a Black Lawyer"

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi: "On Being a Black Lawyer is the intriguing title of the blog launched this month by Yolanda Young, a lawyer, author, columnist and TV commentator. She began the blog on the very day a black lawyer was elected president of the United States, writing at the time:

For some time I've been thinking about starting a conversation with the African American legal community. It often seems to me that we are both legion and alone. How nice I thought it would be for us to have a place to come to question, vent and on days like this one, celebrate. Today, one of our own, was chosen by the widely diverse and exceedingly complicated citizens of this young nation to be President of the United States. I feel the kind of pride and kinship black barristers must've known the day Justice Thurgood Marshall donned his black robe for the first time or Charles Hamilton Houston won his first Supreme Court Case that fittingly committed every state to providing a place for the legal training of future black lawyers.

Young attracted attention within the blogosphere earlier this year for an item she wrote at The Huffington Post recounting the segregation she experienced as a staff attorney at Covington & Burling as "reminiscent of Jim Crow." She described the firm as "stockpiling its staff attorney ghetto with blacks and other minorities" and wrote, "The vast majority of Covington's black attorneys do no substantive work, have no control over their case assignments and no opportunity for advancement."

Young is a 1995 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and author of the 2003 memoir, On Our Way To Beautiful. She is a regular contributing columnist to USA Today and has published pieces in The Washington Post and Essence Magazine. She also writes and posts videos on the blog Spade, which she describes as "a critical look at black America."