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DIVERSITY MODEL
PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES
Law Firms |
Bar Associations | Corporations |
Law Schools
Corporate
Employers Of Lawyers
A. Commitment to Diversity
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General Counsel serves
as role model and champion of diversity by actively providing direction
and leadership to promote diversity, creating working environment fostering
diversity, creating and implementing department-wide action plan, with
measurable goals, communicated to whole department and monitored and
updated annually. (cf., Minority Corporate Counsel Association).
B. Recruitment
1. Commitment
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Stress the company's programs
for lawyers of color in promotional materials and discussions with all
prospective hires and other individuals and organizations.
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Use executive search firms
who specialize in lawyers of color, for both new lawyers just out of
law school and laterals. Insist that all search firms include minorities
in the slate to be considered. Review the diversity performance of search
firm and, if necessary, change firms if diversity needs are not met.
When there is a job opening, do not accept a candidate slate that does
not include people of color. (cf., American Corporate Counsel Association
and Minority Corporate Counsel Association).
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Broaden the pool of law
schools used by the company. Include schools with greater numbers of
minority students. Establish relationships with deans and minority and
other professors at these and all law schools to identify promising
applicants of color.
2. Recognition/Compensation
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Publicly recognize and
reward lawyers and staff who show outstanding performances in achieving
diversity.
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Award bonuses to lawyers
in the company who are actively recruiting lawyers of color. Include
diversity-recruiting activities in all evaluations and decisions on
salary, bonus, stock or option awards and advancement.
3. Networking
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General Counsel, other
senior lawyers and managers in the department hold informational interviews
with lawyers of color who later can be contacted when positions open.
This also builds a positive relationship with the lawyer.
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Attend/sponsor career
days and job fairs with law schools, other corporations and organizations
within the legal community, including minority law student groups, minority
bar associations, even if not hiring at that time.
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Sponsor periodic receptions,
both at law schools and on-site at the company, to provide minority
law students an opportunity to meet minority and majority lawyers within
the company and see what the company can offer minority lawyers.
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Sponsor or co-sponsor
seminars at law schools with minority student organizations.
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Encourage minority lawyers
and law clerks to engage in informal "word of mouth" recruitment of
minority lawyers/clerks through their own networks.
4. Law Clerks
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Actively participate in
local first year minority summer law clerk program. (Usually sponsored
by local bar associations and/or law schools).
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Hire local second and
third year minority law students to work at the company during the academic
year.
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C. Hiring
1. Commitment
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The Department assumes
a leadership role for diversity within the company by achieving goals
and communicating importance and benefits of diversity to others in
the company. (cf., Minority Corporate Counsel Association)
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Ensure that the company's
strategic plans include substantial provisions relating to minority
hiring, retention and advancement, with concrete programs focused on
achieving specific goals.
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Maintain a well funded,
diversity committee that meets regularly and is chaired by the General
Counsel or other senior lawyer.
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Provide training to all
interviewers, including videos, manuals, diversity consultants and frequent
in-department discussions of the importance of diversity and issues
important to lawyers of color.
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Include lawyers of color
on the Hiring Committee and other leadership committees.
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Include lawyers of color
in the company as interviewers whenever possible.
2. Accountability
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Adopt goals and timetables
for minority hiring and advancement, as well as written company policies
on non-discrimination and prohibition of racial harassment.
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Carefully monitor and measure progress with respect to real goals
and timetable for minority hiring and advancement.
3. Laterals
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Hire minority laterals,
making sure that junior lawyers of color know that the company is anxious
to develop a critical mass of lawyers of color in the company and fully
intends and desires to promote lawyers of color to senior and management
positions as well.
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The company should make
it clear that senior lateral lawyers can be role models and mentors
for junior lawyers.
D. Retention/Promotion
1. Commitment
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Involve the General Counsel
and other influential senior lawyers in the department's management
in demonstrations of the company's commitment to diversity, including
chairing of committees dealing with diversity efforts and establishment
of a diversity plan that is strongly supported by management, communicated
to the entire department/company, and evaluated and updated annually
by the management.
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Immediately stop behavior and practices that are prejudicial to lawyers of
color in order to effectuate an institutional change in attitude. Publicly
state (without identifying individuals) that prejudicial behavior will
not be tolerated. The actions the company takes to address such behavior
at the senior and junior levels will improve the environment for all
employees in the company and increase productivity.
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The General Counsel becomes
personally acquainted with, and periodically checks in with, the lawyers
of color to determine whether they are in an environment where they
can do their best work.
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The General Counsel and
other senior lawyers in the department ensure that lawyers of color
are gaining the experience necessary to advance in the department, including
access to formal and informal social events.
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Include in the company's practices attention to including lawyers of color
in formal and informal company and client events. It is the informal
relationships that often prove most valuable.
2. Policies and Practices
3. Assignments
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Develop and promulgate
internal policies and practices that affect assignment of matters to
lawyers, assignment of lawyers to particular businesses or clients.
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Include lawyers of color
in efforts to improve relationships with businesses and clients, including
direct contact with clients.
4. Mentoring
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Implement a formal, written
mentoring program tailored to the department's milieu. Experiment to
see what approaches work best for lawyers of color - e.g., focus on
minority mentees only vs. all lawyers; use minority mentors for minority
mentees vs. senior white males in the company as mentors; or use mentors
from mentee's practice group vs. mentors from another part of the department/company.
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Elements common to successful programs include:
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Careful selection
of mentors, including powerful and influential lawyers and businesspersons
in the company, but excluding individuals whose personality or biases
make them inappropriate as mentors.
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Successful mentors
have the necessary position, authority, commitment, ability and
sensitivity to fulfill the role effectively.
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Program provides adequate
training to mentors and mentees, including what to expect and how
to conduct the relationship.
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Ensure that the managing
lawyer and/or department head regularly checks with lawyers of color
to learn their perspective of how they are doing in the company
and under the mentoring program. Include in the discussion the lawyer's
views of the features of the program that are working and the features
that could be improved and how to make those improvements.
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Commitment and willingness
to try different models when one particular variant fails.
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Establish specific goal-oriented
plans jointly with mentors and mentees. Determine jointly whether it
is better to monitor and update every six months vs. informal meetings.
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Stress to mentor the importance
of including mentee in social settings with clients, including dinner
parties, lunch and golf vs. strictly in-office meetings.
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5. Evaluations
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Review and revise as appropriate
internal policies and practices to eliminate bias in reviews and evaluations
that determine performance, compensation and advancement. (See, e.g.,
American Bar Association, Commission on Women in the Profession, Fair
Measure: Toward Effective Lawyer Evaluations).
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Educate lawyers who perform
evaluations on the most effective ways to measure performance, conduct
an effective performance appraisal and deliver feedback on substance
and style of performance.
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Monitor evaluations to
determine if there is a difference in the kind and number of comments
about white lawyers and lawyers of color.
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Educate lawyers on how
to elicit and receive constructive feedback on their work.
6. Tracking
7. Exit Interviews
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Perform exit interviews
of lawyers of color, using lawyers of color as interviewers.
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Provide management of
the department/company with the results of those interviews and implement
responsive efforts where appropriate.
E. Leadership in Diversity
1. Diversity and Management
Training
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Provide and require diversity
training for everyone in the company, on a periodic basis to examine
how assumptions evolve, how treatment of others can be inadvertent,
and how behavior and perceptions based on stereotypes can be altered.
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Provide and require management
training for all supervisors in the department/company. Many issues
that have a disproportionately negative affect on minority lawyers stem
from poor management.
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If one training program
does not work for your department/company, hire another one that is
more suited to your department/company's needs, culture and style.
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Such training is important
because lawyers of color often feel oppressed by the need to carry the
burden of dispelling unconscious assumptions and perceptions. Diversity
training helps to ease these burdens.
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Include within the performance
evaluations of supervisors their success in retaining and promoting
lawyers of color.
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Include within the performance
evaluations of lawyers with outside counsel hiring authority their success
in retaining minority law firms and lawyers of color in majority law
firms.
2. Ombudsman
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3. Retention of Outside Counsel
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Adopt and implement an
outside counsel retention policy that includes the retention of minority-owned
law firms and lawyers of color at majority-owned law firms.
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When retaining outside
counsel, include in the retention letter the company's requirement to
have diversity in the associates and partners who work on the company's
transactions, litigation and other matters.
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Encourage and help facilitate
joint ventures between minority and majority law firms.
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Encourage majority law
firms to assign lawyers of color on the company's transactions, litigation
and other matters.
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Encourage in-house lawyers
and business persons with outside counsel retention authority to select
minority partners at majority firms as billing partners on the company's
matters.
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Allow lawyers of color
from outside law firms to work within the department for several months
to a year. Upon their return to the law firm, send them business directly
and consider them for hire when positions open within the department/company.
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The General Counsel and
other senior managers in the department hold meetings with managing
partners and other influential partners at law firms to inform them
of the company's strong commitment to diversity and expectation of having
diversity in the outside lawyers that represent the company. (cf., Bell
South Corporation, Lucent and Wells Fargo).
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The General Counsel requires
outside law firms to respond in writing to an annual questionnaire about
the firm's diversity and their efforts to increase/retain diversity
in the firm.
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The General Counsel requires
the outside law firms to provide diversity information either in periodic
reports or on each bill to the company setting out the dollar amount
of the legal fees on each matter attributable to the work of partners
and associates of color.
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When appropriate move
the company's legal work from a law firm that is not responding to the
requests from the company for diversity to a law firm with better track
records on diversity. Inform both firms why the work is being moved.
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Encourage outside law
firms to participate in minority bar associations and minority counsel
programs.
4. Minority Bar Association
and Minority Counsel Programs
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Actively and strategically
participate in local, state and/or national minority bar associations
and/or minority counsel associations and programs.
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Emphasize throughout the
department that the company encourages the involvement of attorneys
in minority bar associations, and minority corporate counsel programs
and supports, financially and otherwise, these bar associations, programs
and other initiatives and events that encourage greater diversity in
the legal community. (cf., Association of the Bar of the City of New
York, Minority Corporate Counsel Association and Bar Association of
San Francisco).
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Ensure that all members
of the company know of the company's involvement in these programs.
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Openly and positively
support and encourage all lawyers in the company to participate in these
programs and encourage lawyers of color to participate in these programs,
including program events, meetings, roundtables, conferences and leadership
positions.
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Ensure inclusion of lawyers
of color at prestigious or otherwise professionally advantageous events,
including for example attendance at conferences and judges' dinners.
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General Counsel and other
senior and influential lawyers in the company should seek seats on boards
or committees of minority bars and/or minority counsel programs to demonstrate
the company's commitment.
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Actively participate in,
provide leadership and help fund local, state and national minority
counsel programs and encourage other companies to do likewise. (cf.,
Aetna, Bank of America, General Motors, Pacific Telesis and Wells Fargo).
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Maintain up to date information
on the company's lawyers of color and provide that information to the
minority bar associations and/or minority counsel programs.
5. Scholarship Programs
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Fund one or more minority
law student scholarships for students attending area law schools, administered
by law schools, or minority or majority bar associations, including
the American Bar Association Minority Scholarship Program.
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Actively get to know the
students who receive the company's scholarships.
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