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The demography of the legal profession has changed rather dramatically in recent decades, yet the consequences of a more racially and ethnically diverse pool of lawyers for the administration of justice have not received significant attention. The present research examines how the racial composition of the local legal profession affects one facet of criminal law: the sentencing of convicted defendants. Building on prior work in the fields of law, stratification, and mobility, we hypothesize that racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing are mitigated where the legal profession is more diverse. In line with this hypothesis, analysis of data from a sample of large urban counties taken between 1990 and 2002 shows that the black-white racial disparity in sentencing attenuates as the number of black attorneys in the county increases, net of the percent black in the county and other possible confounding variables. Comparable results are found for Hispanics. The findings are discussed in the context of a demographically changing legal profession and prior work on racial disparities in the justice system. Wi th the legal profession now more racially and ethnically diverse than at any point in U.S. history, a seemingly important question for the study of law and society is whether this demographic change has consequences for the administration of justice. Yet surprisingly little research to date has examined this issue. The sociolegal literature is well stocked with introspective studies about the changing nature of the legal profession and the transformation of legal practice (Abel 1989;Cappell 1990; see Heinz et al.

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