Diversity: Crowell & Moring LLP

Diversity at Crowell & Moring

Crowell & Moring appreciates that its success as a law firm and its well-being as a community depends upon creating and maintaining a diverse team of talented professionals. We value individual differences and recognize that the vitality of our culture is in large measure a function of the very different perspectives, histories and experiences that our individual lawyers and staff bring to the firm. For these reasons, we seek to recruit, retain and encourage the professional and personal development of people of diverse backgrounds.

Crowell & Moring is fortunate already to have in its partnership a number of nationally recognized diverse lawyers, including a former clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall and a member of the Board of Trustees of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (Karen Hastie Williams); an alumna of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the past chair of the Committee on Grievances for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Laurel Pyke Malson); a patent litigator twice named as an Intellectual Property Law "Superlawyer" by Los Angeles Magazine (Kim Nobles); a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and recipient of the Gallinghouse Award for Excellence in Financial Litigation from former Attorney General Janet Reno (Mike Martinez); and a former Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review who is now a prominent Washington tax practitioner (Charles Hwang).

To give focus and renewed energy to the firm's commitment to diversity, its Management Board in 2004 commissioned a task force to evaluate diversity issues at the firm and to make recommendations for how the firm could increase and sustain diversity within the firm over the long term. With the help of one of the nation's leading consultants on law firm diversity -- an expert highly recommended by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association -- the firm has now put into place a strategic plan to integrate diversity into all aspects of firm life. As part of that process, the firm has established a Diversity Advisory Council (which includes two Management Board members) to oversee implementation of the plan.

In addition, in connection with the firm's twenty-fifth anniversary, Crowell & Moring launched a number of exciting new initiatives that reflect the strength of the firm's renewed commitment to the values of diversity. These include:

• the establishment of a $25,000 scholarship program to award grants to minority law students in the District of Columbia to help defray the costs of legal education;
• the creation and funding of two public service summer internships for Howard University law students;
• the establishment of an educational outreach program in the community adjacent to the firm's Irvine, California office to serve the predominantly Hispanic students who attend the poorest middle school in Orange County, California; and
• the initiation of a "Celebrating Diversity" speaker series that will bring to the firm an array of diverse speakers from different walks of life to speak on issues of interest to our lawyers and staff.

We are enthusiastic about all of these new diversity initiatives and look forward to their further development and implementation.

Crowell & Moring is an equal opportunity employer. It does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, personal appearance, political affiliation, marital status, family responsibilities, disability or status as a veteran.