Diversity

  |  Special Section  |  June 2015

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Roundtable Discussion On Diversity Issues

T h e O l d e s T l a w J O u r n a l i n T h e u n i T e d s T a T e s 1 8 4 3 - 2 0 1 5

philadelphia, Tuesday, June 2, 2015

The editorial staff of The Legal Intelligencer recognizes diversity as a continuing con-

cern in the legal community. This is our biannual discussion, an attempt to propose concrete solutions for the issues the legal profession faces in recruiting, hiring and retaining minor-ity attorneys.

We invited a group of practitioners to offer their suggestions on steps law firms can take to increase diversity and inclusion, maintain a pipeline and bring the LGBT community into the mix.

Our editors selected the panelists from a number of volunteers and lightly edited the transcript for clarity. Excerpts from the discussion follow:

Christopher Lewis (moderator): We want to focus on the best practices for improving diversity in the legal profes-sion. The bar now has a plethora of diversity initiatives. Some have worked well, others don’t seem to be accomplish-ing much. Looking at your own experi-ences, what is the one top step a law firm can take to enhance its diversity?

Nadeem Bezar: Coming from a smaller or midsize firm, I’m sort of a bottom-line guy. So the way I look at it is plain and simple: Hire more people who are diverse. Make a commitment, stick to it, and go out and hire those

candidates. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.

Michelle Lipkowitz: One statistic I like to use with my partnership is that more diverse teams have better results, and more diverse partnerships have higher profits per partner. For the peo-ple you need to convince and get over that bar, that’s the statistic I like to use. One of the keys there is sponsorship. One of the ways to get people over that bar is to get people really vested in them. And while we would like to assume that sponsorship is going to happen naturally for everyone, it’s not going to. We can’t force sponsoring relationships, but what we can do is focus on strategic sponsor-ships, and give people options and try to key up those relationships.

Wesley Payne: Hiring is one thing, but retention and making people feel like they are desired to be there is prob-ably more important than anything else. It’s like anything: If you have motivated employees, they do well. If you have people who think, “I’m here for two years and I’m gone,” they leave, because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you don’t just have to hire; you have to put in the mechanisms to retain people.

Diana Rabeh: One thing we did in Reed Smith that was very helpful in terms of retention is that the diverse

associates got together on their own and said, “You know what, let’s create a diversity initiative amongst the associ-ates. Let’s meet once a month. Let’s talk about the issues.” I think by having it on the ground level, it really helps to know, OK, I’m having an issue. Who can I go talk to? Let me talk to another diverse associate who is two years senior to me. And by creating that relationship early on, people want to stay, and you have a little bit better success at retention.

Marilou Watson: Anything that any firm, corporation or bar association does has to be deliberate and intentional.

special section

2015 Roundtable Discussion on Diversity Issues

Bezar

When you start with that and bear that in mind, you really have a great chance of reaching the goals that you have. What’s really important for any organi-zation to recognize is to know that each person has value, and to recognize the value that each of those individuals brings to the table. Just think about it from a business perspective—the way a business runs optimally is knowing what each person brings, what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are, and to really balance that out to create a team that is going to be most beneficial to your customers or those that are seek-ing your services.

Alexander Gonzalez: The focus should clearly be on building relation-ships, and encouraging partners and senior folks at law firms to reach out. Provide unsolicited advice is what I always try to encourage people to do, in reaching out and helping people along in their careers. But it also has to work from the bottom up, right? So people need to get out of their comfort zone and knock on people’s door and ... build those relationships upwards as well. Because it won’t work just by encourag-ing the partnerships to build relation-ships downwards. People at the younger levels just [need] to reach out of their comfort zone and try to develop these relationships, and basically take hold of their own career development.

Brian Seaman: It’s so great that we have these groups and committees for the diverse attorneys within the firm, but one thing that we found we weren’t doing very well that we’ve been working on is including the majority attorneys in that discussion, because often you’re looking at the leadership of law firms and it’s not incredibly diverse. So what efforts can we take to get everybody else involved, rather than it just being the diverse attorneys sitting at that meeting? One thing we’ve done is when we have

diverse CLE lunches and things like that, every diverse attorney has to bring two majority attorneys or nondiverse attorneys with them. And it’s been great, because we say, “Hey, you get some CLEs and you get a free lunch, and you learn about a topic that’s important to us and it’s important to the firm.” And it’s a way to get buy-in from the whole firm, rather than just people who are passion-ate about it.

Lipkowitz: We’ve instituted a new kind of a brown-bag lunch series called “The Conversation,” and it focuses on things such as unconscious bias or con-structive feedback.

Mark Phillis: One of the things we’ve done is really try to look at the whole constant mentoring and then hoping the mentorship leads to sponsorship rela-tionships. It’s challenging, because those can’t be forced on folks. So what we’ve done is, in addition, we have office men-tors through our different affinity groups. We have in-person affinity group meetings every other year, so we kind of develop a personal relationship, hopefully, between one of the associates and other associates, but also with maybe at least one shareholder in the group so that they have somebody they feel like

they can call and say, “How do I deal with this situation?” So that people can have somebody that they can go to and feel like they can have a conversation that maybe they can’t have with their official mentor, so that they can then learn from that, and that may develop into a sponsorship relationship. It may not, but at least they have somebody that they can talk to about issues that may be unique to their particular situation, their particular affinity group.

We also have high-performing associ-ates who we’ve been paring with signifi-cant rainmakers as they are coming up—a couple of years out of partner-ship—to try to see ... are we making sure that these people are getting the right opportunities? Are they being put on the high-profile projects? Are they getting exposure to people in other offices? The kinds of things you would need to build your profile so that when it comes time for the decision for shareholder and promotion, you’re going to be in a posi-tion to make it.

Royce Smith: In my career, the two most important practices I’ve seen is from the top leadership of the firm a willingness to seek out diverse talent, and a willingness to invest in that tal-ent. In my experience, the best men-toring relationships have not just been the ones where you can shoot a quick email to someone and ask them a question, but it’s, “I’m bringing you in on this case. You’re going to sit second chair. I’m going to teach you how a medical malpractice trial works. And then you’re going to take this client of mine and you’re going to work up that case on your own. I’ll supervise you, and I’m going to put you in a position to succeed.”

The committees are wonderful. The lunches and the CLEs are won-derful. But if we’re talking about, like Nadeem said, bottom-line practical

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Gonzalez

diversity having an impact in the pro-fession, it needs to be a one-on-one, capital “m” Mentorship.

Lewis: Too often the discussion focuses on the defense bar. We’ve seen more diversity in plaintiffs law firms in recent years. And the question is, what are the best practices that the plaintiffs firms have adopted to bring diversity into the profession?

Smith: The best practice I’ve seen is a deliberate, articulated desire for diverse talent from the named partners at a claims firm. These firms are, by nature, small. They don’t have access to the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group resume bank, the defense firms do. They’re not in the best position to do on-campus recruiting, because, quite frankly, a fresh-out-of-law-school stu-dent, in some cases, is not prepared to handle the workload of a plaintiffs attor-ney and the independence that our prac-tice requires. So the best thing I’ve seen is top-down leadership saying, “We are going to diversify our firm. We are going to put our diverse attorneys in positions of leadership within the pro-fession, leadership on cases, and give them all the responsibility that they can handle on our cases.”

Bezar: I think there has been an increase in hiring at plaintiffs firms of diverse attorneys—absolutely, the statis-tics bear that out, but the statistics are a little skewed. ... There has been an increase in established plaintiffs firms, long-established plaintiffs firms, in hir-ing diverse candidates. There absolutely has been an increase, but it’s not the same increase that has been reported in terms of diverse attorneys working in the plaintiffs bar. ... Where it appears that there are more diverse candidates in the plaintiffs bar, it’s not at long-estab-lished firms through initiatives in better hiring practices, it’s because successful

attorneys like Royce or other young attorneys have gone out and started their own firm.

Payne: It doesn’t matter if it’s a large firm or a small firm—personal contact is very important, but most importantly personal contact when somebody isn’t doing well. Getting them back on the right track. Sometimes tough love is a lot better than patting someone on the head, giving them a C and letting them move on and then eventually fail. And it is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Sometimes you’re not the nicest guy in the world because of it, but you retain people a lot more when you do.

Bezar: I can’t imagine how many times people who are either floundering or are in difficult positions have thought to themselves afterwards, “I wish some-body had told me.” But we’re at an age where people, one, have stopped picking up the phone and stopped making eye-ball contact. I mean, come on with the emails. Enough. Call somebody. Use the other four or five senses that God gave you, right? And then the other thing is, before you give someone a pink slip, give them a chance to make it right, because that’s all it takes. Maybe it takes

personal contact or, “Hey, this was a good deposition that you took, right, but you just should have asked this one more question.” And that’s the difference between a C and the B-plus, right?

Payne: I talked to my associate about this just last week. I said, “You’ll notice, I don’t send you emails. I walk down to your office because I want to see you.” I don’t want to just merely get the answer. I want your input. It’s your thought pro-cess. That’s what makes an attorney. I want to force you to use that thought process. I don’t want five words when I’m going to be advising a client on what to do. I want to know everything that you felt about that deposition. I don’t really care about what questions you asked. As an old partner once told me, “I don’t care what you asked them. I’ll fix that at trial. What I want to know from you is, what did you think about that person? Do you find them to be credi-ble?” And you’re not going to get that in an email. That is an interpersonal rela-tionship that you have to develop with the associate, and it’s also the skills that they have to develop to be successful in those depositions.

Lewis: How do you institute that behavior throughout and across a law firm? How do you clone Wes Payne or Nadeem and ensure that all attorneys are reaching out and giving that kind of hands-on guidance that many young associates need?

Payne: You don’t clone people; you accept people as what they are. I know very successful attorneys who are just not people persons. And for those who are, that is usually part of the firm’s cul-ture, and you change that firm’s culture. And where many times I find it falls down in diversity-type issues is that there’s not that initial connection between ... the partner and that diverse associate. A year goes by, no connection.

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Lewis

A second year goes by, no connection. The third year starts, and all of a sudden people are getting better assignments and that person isn’t. So what you have to do is say to your partners, “Hey, look, we do this with the superstar over here, we can also talk to this person over here.” And it’s amazing that you can actually get that conversation going with people.

Watson: One other way to try to change that culture is you mirror the behavior that you want, correct?

Payne: Correct. Watson: If you’re doing that and oth-

ers see that you’re doing that, they may take your lead. But in addition to that, if you’re in a position to be able to men-tor—and this is what we do every day when we are dealing with other associ-ates, other partners—I’m always willing and open to help them out, but I tell them that I expect them to do the same thing, too, for someone else. And I don’t just do it for diverse associates; I do it for everyone. And so when I set that expec-tation, then I have to hope and believe that there’s going to be a trickle-down effect, and you’re mirroring the behav-ior you want to see. And, hopefully, in

time people will remember, “Hey, this person sat down and kind of showed me the ropes and told me what I needed to do.” But you have to follow it up with the ask, right? Just like with clients. I’m happy to help you in any and every way I can, but I expect you to do the same.

Lipkowitz: In terms of the sponsor-ship issue, we have to recognize that we’ve been very careful. A lot of our best rainmakers will not be the best sponsors. We need to be realistic in terms of who we ask to sponsor people. In terms of the feedback, there’s also potentially a gen-erational issue. The feedback issue goes both way. We need to both train our partners on effective feedback, making the time, how vital it is. We’re not just too busy. It needs to be more than once a year. And we also need to train our associates in asking for feedback, staying on top of the partnership.

Consult with a senior associate or another young partner who’s worked very closely with the partner that you’re working for and ask for advice. How does this person like to receive cases? Do they want them highlighted? Attached to the memo?

Lewis: I’ve always felt that one of the best books on diversity, which probably does not mention the word “diversity,” is a book called “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, who was a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist. The point of the book is that people have cognitive biases, and those cogni-tive biases are especially pronounced in people like lawyers who have high cog-nitive skills. One of those biases is the recency effect, that people remember things that are more recent. And with young associates, what I see happening at many large law firms is that if you do one good assignment, you get a halo effect. If you do one bad assignment, you get the opposite. And so judgments are

made very fast, even though in life, just like a person shooting basketballs, they regress to the mean. They may have a hot streak one day and be off the next day. So one of the things we’ve done at Blank Rome to address that is we have career development advisers that are assigned to each associate so that we have a formal system wherein we check in with them, and try to guide them and assess them, and just defer that quick judgment about whether they’re a super-star associate or not. What’s your experi-ence been?

Smith: With respect to the plaintiffs bar—and it’s one of the disadvantages that the plaintiffs bar does have—most of our firms can’t have a separate com-mittee—we don’t have enough attorneys to form that committee. We don’t have the resources to have a career develop-ment consultant come in from outside of the firm and help the young associates in that office. So, getting back to the best practices, what I’ve seen work really well is when that named partner at the law firm says, “I’m now your career develop-ment mentor, I’m also your boss, I’m also your first chair. I’m going to assume all those roles and take on all these responsibilities to lift you up and to put you ... in a position to succeed.” You can’t set up infrastructure to set up that accountability, so it has to revert back to the managing partners of the firms. They have to be responsible for that.

Lewis: Most of the discussion so far has really focused on the retention side. So let’s go to hiring and the question of how you get people in the door. What are the best strategies for getting people in the door to begin with?

Bezar: I’m going to repeat the same thing I keep saying: Pick up the phone and call somebody and tell them you need somebody. I should be able to call any one of the 10 of us in this room and Lipkowitz

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say, “I’m looking for an associate. They have to be interested in doing plaintiff-side work. Can you help me out Wes, or, can you help me out, Michelle?”

Watson: We have a commitment to programs that bring in law students at different levels. We don’t just have the 2L summer programs that every law firm has, but we also support a 1L diver-sity law student program, both in our Philadelphia office through the PDLG, as well as in the Montgomery County office, which is where I’m located. And I can tell you right off the top a couple of examples.

First of all, when I started at Fox Rothschild seven years ago, I was the only diverse attorney in our Montgomery County office of about 30 attorneys. I am now, seven years later, one of four attorneys. It’s moving in a positive direc-tion. There has been a commitment to really going and finding diverse talent, giving them the opportunity in their first year, and evaluating how they’ve performed by giving them feedback, mentoring them, and so on, and in many

cases bringing them back in. And we are now on our second round of potential hires coming into our firm. One student started as a 1L. We brought him right back. Didn’t even interview the next summer. We were so impressed, and he was offered a position and has been there now two years. We have someone that’s trailing right behind him who is our 2L this year, with a very positive outlook. And we’re bringing in another 1L. This is a program that we’ve com-mitted to. The same thing in our Philadelphia office. So that is one way that firms can work toward increasing the diversity of their associates.

Lipkowitz: I truly think that reten-tion and promotion of diverse lawyers is inextricably tied to the hiring of diverse lawyers. I think the diverse lawyers need to see diverse lawyers succeeding and being promoted as partners in the firm in order to attract them. They also need people like us in the room, in rooms they don’t even know exist for conversa-tions they don’t even know are being had, in order to be attracted to the firm. I remember when I made partner at McGuireWoods many years ago, I remember all of the diverse associates were basically watching. “What’s going to happen with Michelle? If Michelle can’t succeed, how am I going to suc-ceed?” So I think it’s vital to focus also on the promotion and retention of the diverse lawyers we have in order to hire diverse lawyers.

Rabeh: One other thing that is really helpful in terms of attracting diverse associates is having your attorneys be committed to not only being involved in the PDLG program and these other formal programs, but also being involved in the community law schools. I am vice president of the Villanova Minority Alumni Board, and we’re actively engaged with law students. If there’s a

great student, I’m going to bring them in. And by having attorneys involved in the community, you’re going to start see-ing what great talent there is. And often diverse students don’t know what to do. As a first-generation attorney, I didn’t have a network of people to ask. And I recall a career adviser at Villanova asking me, “Who do you know that’s an attor-ney?” “No one.” “Who does your family know that’s an attorney?” “No one.” How else am I supposed to get a job? So if you have your attorney there at these schools talking to students, they’re like, “OK, well, she works at Reed Smith, maybe I can talk to her one day down the line if I have a question.” I think you have to build these relationships early on, especially for diverse candidates.

Payne: One of the things we’ve tried at the PDLG is not just to identify stu-dents to hire, but try to give them the skills to make that sort of jump. Because, you’re right, if you don’t know anybody, you have no clue about what the law firm is. It makes it really difficult. And every firm is going to have its own cul-ture to begin with. But there are certain basic things that you don’t know that

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Phillis

you don’t know until you find out you don’t know them. And that’s what we try to provide, those unknown, hidden—I won’t call them traps, but issues—and try to make them non-issues. ... If you expose people not only to the firm, but the firm to these diverse students, it is amazing how well people do.

Gonzalez: In terms of how to get diverse lawyers into your law firm, basi-cally, it’s pretty simple. If they feel com-fortable there interviewing and asking people questions, they will likely come. They’re thinking, “Am I comfortable here,” but it’s also can they be successful here, maybe even if it’s unconscious for them. So in order to make them com-fortable here, you need to have friendly faces, people that they can relate to and build relationships with. Because, gener-ally speaking, I can walk into a room, and I can know whether or not I can build a long-term relationship with someone. So the first impression for a lot of the folks that are coming in to interview—those are really, really important in terms of building the long-term relationships.

At the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania, we meet with the local law students in the law offices, which is the Latino/Latina student organization, twice a year, and we brainstorm. What are the events that you have this year? These are the events that we have this year. How can we partner? And we do that. We show up at their events. We provide informal mentoring on an annu-al basis. I get requests all the time—and this is not just Latinos and Latinas—“Can you introduce me to people?” And I do that. So we need a lot more of that in terms of the pipeline and making people comfortable where they don’t have those relationships, they don’t have the family members that were lawyers. Whenever I speak on behalf of the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania, I always say, “Reach out, help people.” And the more that hap-pens, the more successful we will all be in terms of work product.

I know that there’s a lot of sensitivity if you’re going to provide advice. People say, “Well, this person is diverse, so I have to be careful on how I give this advice.” I say no. We have sophisticated work. If you’re going to give critical advice, just be honest and give it. And then give the person the second chance, give the person a third chance, because it is not easy to succeed, but give that critical advice the way that you would give any nondiverse associate that criti-cal advice.

Lewis: We have a unique and talented leader of the [Philadelphia Bar Association] in the person of Al Dandridge, who is an exceptional attor-ney, who is diverse. What more should the bar be doing to promote diversity and to promote a culture of inclusion within Philadelphia?

Watson: I’m the chair of the Montgomery County Diversity

Committee, and we have had this pro-gram in place. And as I mentioned, the associates that we have hired in Montgomery County have come through that 1L program, and we recog-nize ... we’re not always able to get the students. So one of the things that we have done is, we’ve put ourselves out there. I understand that there’s certain resources that you need, but our resourc-es have been two people that have decided that they’re committed to doing this. Two people supported by many. And we’ve gotten individual law firms to commit to hiring a student, and now we’re a well-oiled machine at this point in that we have 10 law firms that say, “We will take on a 1L student,” and this is an in effort to increase diversity in the Montgomery County bar.

So we have students that apply to us directly. We get our name out there. Initially, when we were taking baby steps, we said to PDLG, “Well, if there are any students that you know.” This is a whole process and there are a lot of students, which is a good thing, and a limited number of law firms. So what we’ve said is, “Hey, if there are students that are interested in being out in Montgomery County, can you send them out to us?” And we go through the interview process. So that’s how, in a way, we were initially kind of piggie-backing on that process and developing our own.

With respect to some of the things that the bar association can do, it’s inter-esting, because we’re kind of like the little sister out in Montgomery County in comparison to the Philadelphia bar. And there’s much work to be done everywhere in Philadelphia, Montgomery County, everywhere else. It was echoed earlier, for instance, by Brian—bringing the nondiverse attor-neys to the table and having them

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involved and bringing them into under-standing the importance of diversity, and that is something I’m doing now. I am really happy to see that it’s very well received. And sometimes people don’t know what to do. It’s kind of like, we really haven’t been around too many diverse people and we’re not sure what to do, but we really want to do some-thing. Again, it’s that relationship build-ing and understanding that you go to those that really want to help and make a difference, and utilize that to get the momentum going, and maybe others will follow along and maybe others won’t. But it’s a matter of getting those at the table who really want to be involved. And so we tend to look to the Philadelphia bar.

They have their own director of diver-sity, Naomi McLaurin, which is huge that the bar has had Naomi and many others prior to her. We don’t have that in Montgomery County. We act in that manner as a committee. But in looking at the standards and things that they may set for us to kind of mirror and fol-low, I think it has to be a totality of the commitment to diversity.

Lewis: Do traditional diversity pro-grams work for the LGBT community? And how can the legal profession ensure that the members of the LGBT com-munity are welcomed?

Seaman: I think they do. I think the most important thing that firms have to do is to be ready to have a conversation, because for many, many years, “gay” was a very dirty word. When I was inter-viewing in 2003, I was scared to death for anybody to know that I was gay, because that’s what we were told in the law firms—”Do not tell them this. Take it off of your Facebook page,” or, “Don’t put it on your resume.” So it was a very different time, and in 10 years, the world has changed.

So, now, I’m seeing law students come in who will come right out and say, “I’m gay. Tell me how a gay associate feels at your firm.” For me, I’m ready to talk about that. I have a big picture of me and my boyfriend on my desk. I’m like, “Go ahead, ask the question.” But for the nondiverse attorneys who may be asked that question, that’s a scary question, because first of all, they may not know the lingo. I have an associate who said, “Do you have, like, a partner?” I said, “No. I don’t play tennis.” But that was to me, saying, “Well, wasn’t that the right word to use?” But I love that we’re hav-ing that conversation. So I think the first thing is you have to open that conversa-tion up. And often it’s an LGBT person in the firm who’s saying, “Hey, I’m going to sit down at diversity committee or at one of theses CLEs and say, ‘Let’s just talk about this stuff. I want you to know how my experience has been. I want you to ask me what I did this weekend.’” And on top of that, I think the most impor-tant thing that firms can do is to equate LGBT with other forms of diversity. Because I think there’s this ladder—this is the most important diversity. And I think a lot of people in the LGBT com-munity feel like it’s just sort of there. I heard someone say, “Well, you’re a white guy who does different things at home.” And I thought, that’s an interesting way to put that.

My firm just named me as the diver-sity chair, and for an LGBT person to be in charge of diversity efforts for a firm is a big deal. And I think more firms should just be open to having that con-versation, and to be saying, “Look, we value your input just as much as we do anybody else’s in the firm. And let’s start that conversation.”

Phillis: I do think traditional pro-grams work with LGBT attorneys—tra-ditional diversity and inclusion pro-

grams. Most folks in this room don’t have to come out as whatever their affinity is. That’s something that isn’t necessarily there for a lot of other folks. So I think you need to create an avenue where people feel safe in being who they are at work and bringing their whole selves to work. Because if you’re spend-ing all that energy thinking about how can I talk about what I did over the weekend or what I’m doing tonight without mentioning who I did it with, you have associates—and sharehold-ers—who are really not fully engaged.

Some of the things you may focus on may be a little bit different because ... the personal story may be a little bit dif-ferent. But I think most folks in this room at some point have covered in one way or another, and so that is something that’s shared with LGBT attorneys and other attorneys, attorneys of color and other people from diverse backgrounds. So I think it is something that firms are paying attention to. I think we’ve seen the bar is taking a very active role at the litigation now and the Supreme Court in the last several years. And I think law

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firms have stepped up on that. Firms ... have understood the value that diversity brings across the board. And while it may not be, at many firms, on an equal level, I think these folks are understand-ing that that’s part of what they need to do to really make it a welcome work-place for everybody.

Lipkowitz: That’s one thing we’re working on as well, is creating that com-fort level. We have a very, very active LGBT affinity group, probably the most active of our affinity groups, but we can’t get to every office. We don’t necessarily have a rep at every office. So one thing we’ve created is ombudspersons for diversity. We have four throughout the firm. We’re trying to create different avenues for people to be able to find that comfort level, and end up in the right hands for discussions. One challenge we’re having is in terms of statistics, a lot of the reporting that we do does not count LGBT as a diversity statistic, and that is a problem.

Seaman: The other problem on the other side is that you have LGBT peo-ple who don’t want to be counted. I’ve made that phone call to people, like, “I know you’re gay. I know you have a

girlfriend. Can I list you?” Because of the coming out part of it, people will say, “I know that partner that I work with is going to look at the NALP form and say, ‘We’ll never look at it.’ And they’re going to start counting, and they’re going to say, ‘Wait, I only know of 10. Who is the eleventh?’” And it’s this crazy thing that we’re going through in our heads.

I think what Mark said is so true: If you create an environment where peo-ple feel comfortable being who they are, then you’re going to attract LGBT stu-dents. When I was maybe a second- or third-[year], we had one of those week-end getaways with all the attorneys and their spouses. And I went to our manag-ing partner and said, “This is going to be the most awkward conversation of your day. I’m gay. I have a boyfriend. I want to bring him. If I bring him will it ruin my career?” And to his credit he said to me, “I can’t think of any reason why, but give me 24 hours. I really want to think on this.” And then he came back the next day and said, “We can’t say we’re inclu-sive and then not act on it. And if any-body gives you even a negative eye, you come to me and I’ll deal with it right there.” So that’s a story that I can tell to LGBT students where they say, “I’m going to be OK here.”

Lewis: We did something similar. What we did was have one of our regu-lar summer associate parties at the home of an LGBT partner, and we thought that sent a message that everybody is absolutely welcomed.

Seaman: And we throw good parties. Lewis: We’ve talked about retention,

we’ve talked about hiring. The last ques-tion is partnership. How do we get diverse attorneys to make that jump from associate to partnership, which many consider to be still the brass ring of law firms?

Payne: How do you change eaters to feeders, is basically what you’re saying. And you have to teach people basically how to hunt. It does not start in year 10 or 11 or 12 when you’ve been an associ-ate that long. You’ve got to start people from the beginning. Focus them men-tally: What do I do for this client? How do I become an integral part of this team? How do I eventually grow to be able to be seen as someone who can take over representation of this client at the right and appropriate time? And that does not start five, six, seven, eight, nine years into the practice; that starts year one. So we’ve got to change the approach, and that approach has got to be to incor-porate that person from the beginning. And if you’re doing that thing of bring-ing them in, taking them to the deposi-tions, making sure they make it to the appropriate client events so they get to be known not only as three letters on a billing sheet but as a person, and that person gets to be known by that client, gets to be liked by the clients—that is a very important step, and you’ve got to start that step from the beginning.

Watson: It’s that sponsorship. It has to start from the beginning. There’s that adage, “Give a man a fish; feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” But in addition to that whole stepwise process, you have to be willing to go to the table for them. I can’t tell you how many times you get someone from the beginning, you bring them up, and they get to the door of partnership, and we have to be mindful of not saying, “You know what, they’re pretty good. I’ll throw in my two cents if needed.” That sponsorship has to continue.

Here’s another thing I’ve found to be huge, is when a client has something positive to say—this is how a client can have an impact maybe with or without knowing. When a client has something

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positive to say, you send those emails to the partnership committee, and you let them know that this is what our clients, who are paying our bills, have said about this person. Take that into consideration. And I think that that holds a lot of weight in the totality of the circumstance.

Payne: I would take it one step fur-ther. Attach it to the associate evalua-tion.

Watson: Absolutely. Payne: Because that way they live in

the file forever. Lipkowitz: This actually brings a lot

of our conversation full circle in terms of the importance of feedback and guerilla sponsorship. The one thing I would add is we need to impress upon these associ-ates that this is not a positive process. The days of just doing great work for X number of years and making partner are over. They need to take an active role in making partner. A number of years ago, I had a “Michelle for Partnership” cam-paign. And I had single-space plan of who I was going to meet with and who I was going to have coffee with. I did that at McGuireWoods. It was planes, trains and automobiles that you need to invest in your own career.

Lewis: I want to give a plug for the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity’s fellows program. When we have associ-ates who are on the eve of partnership, when we know they’re on the partner-ship track, we introduce them and put them through the LCLD fellows pro-gram, and that helps them to create a national network of contacts, which they can then use to learn how to hunt and to feed themselves and others.

Seaman: I did it in 2013, and you don’t even have to hunt. The prey is coming to you. I met people and I had people calling me and saying, “I want to give you business. Even though we’re already giving your firm business, who

do I need to talk to to make sure you get the credit? And who do I need to talk to to make sure that a diverse team is put together for my cases?” So I think that is so key. It’s so great and it completely changed my career. That was my firm investing in a program that they knew would put me in a position to succeed. And then, like you said, taking full advantage of the programs, the opportu-nities that are given to you.

Lewis: It’s that time for closing state-ments. Nadeem, you kicked us off; you go first.

Bezar: So I’m going to blurt out a bottom line again. Whoever is reading this, or whoever hears about this inter-view, don’t be crazy, right? I mean, don’t be crazy. The legal profession needs the attorneys that are operating within it to look like, be like, to represent the clients that they represent. And times have changed. Our clients want attorneys of diverse backgrounds, and it would be business suicide to not have lawyers of different backgrounds representing those clients. So it operates from the inside out—make sure you make your voice heard within your firm—but from the outside in also—your contacts out-side the firm who are doing the hiring. Make sure you hire the attorneys that most suit your needs.

Payne: My biggest caveat is don’t be afraid to make mistakes. None of us are perfect. Many times, what you will try may or may not work, but if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you were wrong for trying. Figure out why it doesn’t work and do it—keep moving just like we do every-thing else in the practice of law.

Lewis: It is not enough to be diverse, we also need to be inclusive. We have three goals at Blank Rome. One is to make the firm a place where each per-son can do his or her best; second is to make the firm a place where each per-

son can bring his or her self to work, which is the point that Mark made; and, finally, to make the firm a place where we harness our diversity to improve the excellence of our client service. If we do all those three things, and we try to do them, then we will succeed in making the firm not just diverse but inclusive and more profitable.

Seaman: We need to keep saying the diversity effort isn’t over. I think a lot of the people who aren’t engaged in this discussion, they think, well, diversity, that was a thing from 10 years ago. But we’re all still working at it. And some-times we need to just keep telling people we’re working every day on this. It’s still important. It’s more important than ever. So how can you be a part of what we’re doing? •

Reprinted with permission from the June 2, 2015 edition of The LegaL InTeLLIgenceR © 2015 aLM Media Properties, LLc. all rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. For information, contact 877-257-3382, reprints@alm.com or visit www.almreprints.com. # 201-06-15-02

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