At cocktail parties, conferences and small get-togethers, I'm hearing murmurs that it's time to revisit the status quo.

Perhaps it a logical extension of liberalism. Or it's the opposite—a backlash to it. For whatever reason, a movement is afoot to redefine diversity beyond gender, ethnicity and race.

“Over the last several years, competing notions of 'diversity' have emerged,” reports a Harvard Business Review post this fall. Instead of the traditional focus on underrepresented groups, the new emphasis is on thought, economic and other types of diversity. And this approach to diversity is gaining traction. HBR reports that less than 45 percent of the largest U.S. businesses now use traditional measures of diversity.

Considering that the legal profession often shadows corporate America, it's plausible Big Law will eventually follow. But should it? And what's the likely result?

First, let's admit that diversity is a touchy subject in its present form. “I've heard from men who gripe that women and minorities get all the advantages—how they get picked for things and have their own events that men aren't allowed to go to,” says a female in-house counsel.

Who knows if a broadened definition of diversity (such as different political views, history of economic hardship, unique skills or experiences) will placate resentment? What's clear, though, is that it'll likely dilute the (paltry) diversity measures currently in place.

That's already happening, the HBR reports. Because an increasing number of companies now define diversity broadly, the rate of growth of minorities and women obtaining board seats has slowed down. What's more, this new definition of diversity “has allowed boards to claim inroads regarding experience-based diversity at the expense of demographic diversity,” the HBR says.

I don't know how to put it politely, so I'll just say it: This sounds like a backdoor effort to push through more white men.

Indeed, applying diversity to a wider range of people can have “an unintended effect,” says Roberta Liebenberg, who chaired the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and is an advisory board member at Direct Women, an organization that advocates for women to serve on corporate boards. She notes that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2010 implemented a rule on board member diversity that “was so broad and vague that it was not clear that it included gender and race.”

While thought diversity and economic diversity sound laudable, should they have the same status as  gender and racial diversity?

“I worry that 'ideological diversity' may be an avenue to directly undermine the efforts to eliminate discrimination,” says Joanna Grossman, a professor at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. “Diversity of thought can be code for supporting a false equivalence between feminism and misogyny.”

But some in the diversity field believe that a more inclusive view of diversity is not a bad thing. “Women, people of color and LGBTQ individuals face particular challenges, yet they're not the only people outside of the majority who struggle,” says Ari Joseph, the diversity director at Brown Rudnick. Joseph, who launched a scholarship at his firm for economically disadvantaged law students, says he sides with a more inclusive definition of diversity. “There are countless things that make each of us unique, and we can't know ahead of time which part of our experiences will end up adding value in the future,” he says.

I sympathize with the big-tent theory of diversity, but I'm afraid we're not there yet in the legal profession. As long as women are barely breaking the 20 percent mark for equity partners and people of color are faring even worse (black partners make up less than 2 percent of all equity partners), are we in a position to take such a generous view of diversity?

For the time being, I vote to nip this one in the bud.

Contact Vivia Chen at [email protected]. On Twitter @lawcareerist.