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hiring lateral attorneys must be women, LGBTQ+, or
minority candidates. This year Stoel Rives was one
of 30 law firms to achieve Certified Plus status that
extends the 30% criteria to senior lateral positions and
formal client pitch opportunities.
RFP and proposal metrics are a useful benchmark,
but clients also want firms to track who is actually
doing the work. Firms generally rely on self-reporting,
but without accurate data, the desire to meet client goals
and firm expectations could diminish transparency
and accuracy — this is why it is important for firm's to
accurately track diversity data and communicate how
diversity data is being used internally and externally.
Unfortunately, assembling, tracking, and
reporting on data for pitching and staffing can be
a cumbersome and painstaking process, including
manually matching pitches and RFP responses to newly
opened matters and then pairing with HR information
in Excel. While doable, it requires a lot of man hours.
diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues
due to innovation.
Profitability: McKinsey's most recent Delivering
Through Diversity report found corporations that
embrace gender diversity on their executive teams were
more competitive and 21% more likely to experience
above-average profitability.
Recruiting: The 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey
shows that 74% of these individuals believe their
organization is more innovative when it has a culture
of inclusion. Another 2016 survey shows that 47%
of millennials are actively looking for diversity and
inclusion when evaluating potential employers.
Data Drives Diversity Results
Some data points are easy to see. They are in the
composition of faces looking back at you around
the conference table at a leadership meeting, or in
the team photograph of those recently promoted to
partner. However, acquiring a complete data set to
inform, support and measure diversity goals is more
complicated. It will involve pulling data from multiple
systems while ensuring that, where appropriate,
confidentiality is maintained, and everyone is
comfortable with how the data is collected, combined
and leveraged.
To achieve progress on diversity, firms can use
a combination of internal and external goals and
measurements. Several areas to start with include:
• Recruiting
• Executive Placement
• Business Development Proposal and RFP
Responses
• Advancement / Promotion
• Staffing / Succession Planning
• Work Opportunities
• Professional Development and Education
One through four above are tracked as part of
Mansfield certification by Diversity Lab, a prominent
diversity organization assessing law firm performance.
Initiatives like the Mansfield Rule can provide law firms
with goals to strive for, guidance on how to measure
improvement, and verified results from a third-party
auditor to confirm progress for clients and external
stakeholders.
To be "Mansfield 2.0 Certified," firms must prove
that 30% of lawyers considered for leadership and
governance roles, promotions to equity partner, and
A firm intelligence platform, like that offered by
Foundation Software Group, is helping us automate
the process of tracking and reporting on diversity
data by bringing disparate sources of data together.
Such a platform provides easy access to pitch team
composition data as it relates to publicly knowable
diversity categories like gender and race. The trick
is figuring out how to plug in who is diverse without
violating confidentiality. A firm would never want
to unintentionally out somebody during diversity
reporting or while developing diversity and inclusion
initiatives. This type of personal harm would mean
twenty steps back for a program instead of one step
forward.
Initiatives like the Mansfield Rule can provide
law firms with goals to strive for, guidance on
how to measure improvement, and verified
results from a third-party auditor to confirm
progress for clients and external stakeholders.
