Leaders among lawyers have signed what they hope will be a historic document with specific goals to increase the number of minority attorneys employed by local law firms, government agencies and corporate law departments.

About 50 people met yesterday to support and sign the Declaration of Independence-style pledge, drafted by the Allegheny County Bar Association. The group included representatives of Pittsburgh's top 25 law firms and the Duquesne University and University of Pittsburgh law schools. Also signing were U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, District Attorney Stephen Zappala, members of the judiciary and lawyers from area corporations.

They committed to five objectives: recruit minorities; hire minorities; strengthen mentoring programs; support collective efforts of the bar association; and submit data to measure progress.

The effort is unique in its goal of synchronizing the individual efforts of local law firms. "All of us are marching to the same drummer by developing this statement together," said Arthur Stroyd, who is stepping down as bar association president today but will continue to help the effort. "And the fact is, I'm not going to let people forget what they signed."

But even the most vocal supporters recognize that the task is daunting. With only a handful of blacks and Latinos in a room full of powerful lawyers and judges, the gulf between goal and reality was unmistakable.

"Make no mistake, we have a long voyage ahead of us," said Stroyd. "It may take years before we see progress."

Progress has been slow in the region's law firms. Survey results released in November by the National Association for Law Placement, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, indicated that minorities made up 1.3 percent of partners in the Pittsburgh firms surveyed, compared with 4 percent nationwide.

Locally, 5.3 percent of associates -- senior and staff attorneys -- were minorities at local firms surveyed. The national figure was 14.6 percent.

Even at the University of Pittsburgh, a potential feeder for law firms and government agencies, minority students tend to leave Pittsburgh once they receive their diplomas. Pitt's law school enrollment consists of about 15 percent minorities, nearly double the 8 percent of five years ago.

But, "Most minority students want to get out of Pittsburgh," said Pitt law Dean David Herring, who signed the document. "They have the perception that Pittsburgh isn't good for minorities." This flight hurts Downtown law firms, whose clients are clamoring for diversity, said Herring.

Some firms are trying to change this perception. Reed Smith, the country's 34th largest firm, has 13 minority attorneys out of the 190 based out of its Pittsburgh office. But one-third of the class of summer associates for 2004 are minority students.

Mentoring programs and diversity scholarships might persuade more minority students to consider Pittsburgh their home, but for now, the lack of diversity serves as a Catch-22 of sorts. Minority law students and young lawyers see the scarcity of others in the firms here and seek urban centers with a different complexion.

Jeffrey O'Neale, a Homestead native, was accepted into Pitt Law School this year. He received a scholarship that would have paid for his education and given him a job at one of the city's biggest law firms, Buchanan Ingersoll.

Yet O'Neale, who has lived in New York, Miami and Pittsburgh, decided to forsake the scholarship and foot the bill for his education in a school outside the region. Regardless of his potential professional success in Pittsburgh, he wanted to work in a city where he would be surrounded by more minority group members.

"I'll have more of a peer group elsewhere."

But other, more entrenched minority attorneys are preparing to sail forward with optimism, seeing this ceremony as a new beginning.

"There's something about lawyers signing documents," speculated James C. Diggs, senior vice president and general counsel at PPG Industries. "Lawyers will respond. This is the direction that Pittsburgh is going."