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Law Practice Management
is also important. Is your organization being deliberate in efforts to recruit diverse employees, retain employees, provide opportunities and advance employees? To this effect, our law firm sought out a way to not only collect diversity recruitment, retention, opportunity and advancement data but to track effort. Mansfield Rule certification enabled us to accurately track and analyze our successes, and also to assess our shortcomings and where we needed to improve. For those unfamiliar, the goal of the Mansfield Rule Program is to increase the representation of diverse lawyers in leadership by broadening the pool of women, LGBTQ+ lawyers, lawyers with disabilities, and/or racial/ethnic minority lawyers who are considered for entry-level and lateral attorney job openings, leadership opportunities, equity partner promotions, and opportunities to connect with clients. By examining and tracking not just the outcomes, but also the effort, as a leader. you continue to engrain this intentional mindset in attorneys.
Other ways your company can further build DEI
goals into its culture include creating employee
resource groups (affinity groups) that focus on self-advocating, work-life balance, educational opportunities for professional development and advancement and promotion. Affinity groups consist of employees with similar backgrounds, interests, or demographic factors such as gender or ethnicity and can take many forms, such as women’s leadership groups, LGBTQ groups, and caregiver groups. It is important to have members of the leadership team in these groups and actively participating.
If your firm does not have the resources to employ a full-time Diversity Officer, empower someone on your leadership team to take on that role and rely on external professionals such as consultants, educators, facilitators, and strategists. It is critically important for leadership to take ownership of prioritizing DEI. As with most law firm initiatives, it starts from the top.
Making DEI a top-level priority at your firm and moving these initiatives forward to engrain them into your firm’s culture, are where many law firms are at in 2023. While there are always challenges, as a law firm leader, putting DEI on the same level as other critical business components and taking an ownership role through active participation and providing guidance to your teams, will set your law firm up for success.
Jody Briandi is the President/Managing Partner of Hurwitz Fine P.C., in Buffalo, NY. Contact her at: jeb@hurwitzfine.com.
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FDCC ANNUAL INSIGHTS 2023