I started getting this question about two years ago, and the first time I heard it my heart dropped, because I could not believe this was where we had landed. It deserves a careful answer. Mine: in nearly every case, keep the identity groups on your resume. Here is the reasoning, including the one situation where I would think twice.
Where I sit on this
For context, this is personal for me. I am Black and Jewish. I was president of JALSA in law school and deeply active in BALSA, and Mosaic has supported affinity bar associations and student affinity organizations since the firm existed. I think these organizations matter enormously, for community and for careers. So when strong candidates ask me whether they should hide that part of their record, I take it seriously, and I do not give a reflexive answer.
The case for keeping them
If affinity leadership is a real part of who you are, it still belongs on your resume, and it still reads as a value add. If your application lands with a reviewer who is a person of color, or simply someone who values community leadership, it helps you. Leadership in BLSA, the Black Bar Association, or the South Asian Bar Association is evidence that you organize people, hold responsibility, and show up consistently, which is what firms are actually screening for in activities.
There is also a colder, purely commercial version of this argument, and firms understand it well. Affinity bar associations are full of general counsel and senior in-house lawyers. An attorney who is genuinely networked in those communities can build relationships and eventually bring in business. Knowing how to navigate different communities is a rainmaking skill. A candidate who has only ever kept their nose down in the work has shown no evidence of it.
The question behind the question
If you would have to hide something you are proud of to get hired somewhere, ask yourself whether you want to work there at all. I recognize that is a simple answer to a hard problem, and that some people have less room to be choosy than others. But it is the honest starting point, and it clarifies more decisions than any resume tactic.
The one narrow exception
Here is where I will be fully honest. The exception is less about identity and more about visible, politically charged advocacy aimed at a specific audience. If a meaningful share of your free time goes to pro bono work that directly opposes the current administration, immigration work being the obvious example, and you are applying to a firm that sits unusually close to the federal government, I would leave that line off that particular application. The calculation is firm-specific. It depends on who they represent and how exposed they are.
That is a different thing from membership or leadership in an identity organization, which I would not scrub. The exception is narrow, it is situational, and for most candidates applying to most firms it never comes up.
Do not sand yourself down into a widget
The broader principle: do not scrub your resume of everything human. The industry already does plenty to turn attorneys into interchangeable units. The parts of your record that show community, leadership, and a life outside the billable hour are what make you memorable in a stack of two hundred resumes that all say law review and M&A. Every candidate situation is different, and it is worth thinking twice when the stakes are unusual. The default, though, is to show up as a full person.
Weighing a resume call like this?
These decisions are personal and firm-specific. Mosaic advises candidates on exactly these judgment calls, with real knowledge of how individual firms read applications.
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