President Barack Obama sought to expand the representation of women and minorities on the federal bench, and many consider diversity gains his most important legacy on the courts. By the numbers, 42 percent of Obama's judicial appointees are women and roughly 37 percent classify themselves as a race or ethnicity other than white. Those figures serve as inspiration and herald progress in the legal profession. Of course—as the data shows—no matter who you are, it doesn't hurt to have a law degree from Harvard, Yale or Stanford.

Here's what the statistics show Donald Verrilli Jr., solicitor general in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2016: “It's not just diversity—I mean the diversity is remarkable—it's the quality of the judges,” said Verrilli, a Munger, Tolles & Olson partner. “It's the convergence of the two things that makes this president's legacy in terms of judicial nominees.”