The ad industry doesn't have too many black people working in it, which has never been that much of a concern to the whites. Until now, because a fancy lawyer might start suing everybody:

Cyrus Mehri is the lawyer (who has sued the hell out of plenty of big corporations before), and for months his firm has been investigating the racial situation on MAD AVE. Numbers:

Blacks remain underrepresented on Madison Avenue, according to the report, “Research Perspectives on Race and Employment in the Advertising Industry,” which concluded that only 5.3 percent of managers and professionals at agencies in 2008 were black.

And those blacks who do manage to land jobs on Madison Avenue are significantly underpaid, the report said, earning 80 cents for each dollar earned by their white counterparts.

Not to mention:

Compared with the overall U.S. labor market, the advertising industry fares significantly worse on eight measures of employment for black managers and professionals — by an average of 36.7%.

Mehri wants to get the industry to make changes voluntarily, which he's had success doing elsewhere in the past. If not he will surely sue their asses.

[Ad Age, NYT]