Litigation Management

adopting diversity as a business imperative, “It does appear that many corporations see diversity as a way to obtain and retain the best talent available; to get the best ideas on projects. A lot of corporations not only do that internally, but they appear to want their legal arms, or sometimes their insurance carriers, to do the same thing when it comes to hiring legal talent to provide service to the corporation.” Greene noted that when it comes to the legal profession, it is very difficult to get lawyers to change the way they have been doing things for decades. He believes that many in the legal profession have not embraced diversity to the same extent as corporate America. “Some legal departments may tend to resist the change that the corporation itself may be fostering,” he says.

In Greene’s experience, law departments retain the decision-mak-ing responsibility for hiring counsel, and they do so without input from purchasing departments. He believes some corporate law departments, however, believe in the advantages of diversity and have a desire to affect the change needed to achieve diversity.

Law departments that have bought into it, are pushing their outside counsel to have more diverse legal staffs. “Law firms may contend there are challenges to finding and hiring diverse talent. It somewhat becomes the mantra and people start to believe it. I don’t know anyone in business, who if they are told they ‘have to do X, Y and Z or you will lose the business,’ won’t find a way to do it. But the problem is that most law firms truly believe they will never lose business,” Greene comments.

To advance change, in Greene’s view, “Corporations have to let those law firms know that if they do not meet corporate diversity goals there will be a consequence, measured in dollars. Once you say that, they will be able to accomplish your goals.”

As he points out, one of the biggest obstacles for both firms and corporations is the convergence of firm resources. “Sometimes they call it convergence or a preferred provider program. The business-driven, well-intentioned motivations to streamline firm resources have an unintended consequence of decreasing opportunity for minority and small firms,” Greene says.

Where national law firms are engaged, diverse law firms often lose opportunity for business. Per Greene, “a number of law firms that have a deep understanding of the local judiciary, local bar and the jury pool will no longer have opportunities to do the work and to provide the diverse breadth of expertise and ideas to clients.”

CONVERGENC

needs to be balanced to ensure diversity
of ideas and resources to bring those
ideas to the forefront.

Convergence needs to be balanced to ensure diversity of ideas and resources to bring those ideas to the forefront. In an effort to increase awareness of and access to minority legal resources, Greene serves as President of the National Minority Law Group (NLMG), a fully integrated group of certified minority-owned law firms devoted to delivering the highest quality of legal services on a national basis to corporate America.

A Regional Firm Perspective
Tom Brophy, Esq.
President and Chief Executive Officer
Marshall, Dennehey

Tom Brophy, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Director, Casualty Department at the regional defense litigation law firm Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin, with 19 offices throughout six states with 225 shareholders, recognizes the need to be proactive in promoting diversity. As Brophy suggests, law firms have changed over the years. Forty years ago, firms were often restricted on a religious and ethnic basis. That has changed. However, the diversity issues today involve women and racial and cultural mi-norities. In his opinion, law firms should promote diversity because it is the right thing to do. He says, “We owe it to one another to assist those who have not historically been provided with opportunities.”

“Changetakes alotofmuscle”

“The strongest firms are far
more diverse than they
were 30 years ago.”

Recruiting and retaining minority lawyers remains a continuing focus for the firm. According to Brophy, “If you don’t track the number of minority lawyers your firm hires and retains, you may not realize how many minority lawyers are leaving and you may find that your law firm, despite a sincere interest in becoming more diverse, in fact has made little progress. You have to track successes and failures to learn why minority lawyers leave or stay and then take steps to change those things that encourage minority lawyers to leave.”