Black associates in the litigation department had it worse than me. They were always staffed on document review, which is essentially the grunt work of litigation. As a litigator, you want to take depositions or write a brief. If you're doing document review for six months you have no skills to build upon. When a black associate asked to be rotated off to a different assignment, a partner said, "We kind of need you to be here for continuity purposes, but if you want to do something else it's on you." Who would ask for a meaningful project when you're unlikely to do your best because your time is consumed with document review? I remember one document review project where three of the four attorneys were black. The one white attorney was rotated off.