By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - Minorities are far more likely than whites to file an employment discrimination claim without being represented by an attorney, greatly diminishing their chances for a successful outcome, according to a study by the American Bar Foundation.

The study of 2,100 U.S. district court cases between 1988 and 2003 found African Americans were 2.5 times more likely than whites to file an employment civil rights case without a lawyer.

Among other racial minorities, such as Hispanics and Asians, that figure dropped to 1.9, according to the study.

The disparities remained after researchers took into account factors such as the gender and occupation of plaintiffs, and case characteristics such as the basis of the alleged discrimination.

The paper, "Race and Representation: Racial Disparities in Legal Representation for Employment Civil Rights Plaintiffs," was published in the New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.

Plaintiffs without attorneys were 14 times more likely to have their case dismissed and eight times more likely to have their case entirely dismissed on motion for summary judgment than those with an attorney, according to earlier research co-authored by Laura Beth Nielsen, who co-authored the American Bar Foundation study.

"You have people that have lost faith in the state, broadly speaking. That's a big problem ... with the legitimacy of the entire system," said Nielsen, the director of legal studies at Northwestern University.

The study pointed to a lack of information, lack of trust in lawyers and a lack of time and resources to find a legal representation as "bottom-up" factors that had led to the disparity in representation.

The research suggested "top-down" factors were also at play in terms of how plaintiffs' lawyers selected clients. Interviews with plaintiffs' lawyers showed a highly subjective screening process that may alienate minority clients who lack social and economic resources, the researchers said.

"Minority plaintiffs cannot obtain lawyers as easily as whites, which ends up replicating other inequalities that civil rights law is designed to mitigate," said co-author Amy Myrick, a sociology scholar at Northwestern.

The authors called for increased assistance on the part of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for claimants who were without lawyers, more education on how the legal system worked and more court appointments for those who could not afford legal representation.

The authors also suggested employment attorneys analyze their initial client-screening process. They said more pro bono legal services may ease the racial disparity they found in their research.

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