Diversity
At Our Core
At Foley &
Lardner LLP, we believe the diversity of our people – whose experiences
and perspectives are many and varied – is the foundation of who
we are as an organization. We have worked extremely hard over the years
in order to create and sustain an environment for our attorneys and employees
that embraces and promotes inclusiveness and mutual respect, and we continue
to improve and expand our diversity initiatives.
Solid Infrastructure
Recognizing
that successful diversity efforts must have visible champions and leadership
support at the highest levels, our CEO has mandated that diversity be
included as a critical strategic objective of the firm. To spearhead this
effort our Chief Diversity Partner, Maureen
McGinnity, spends an average of 1400 hours per year as the principal
driver of this program. She also chairs the firm’s Diversity Committee
– a committee comprised of individuals who represent a cross-section
of offices and practices and includes a diverse group of partners, associates,
and professional staff. This committee meets regularly and assists with
the development and strategic direction of our diversity initiatives.
The firm’s
unique Diversity Business Department – headed by the Director of
Diversity – has a dedicated and professional staff, a sizeable budget,
and the resources necessary to implement our diversity initiatives. The
department’s responsibilities include counseling diverse attorneys
on business planning and career development, cultivating relationships
and strategic alliances with diverse organizations, providing avenues
for speaking and writing opportunities to showcase the talents of our
diverse attorneys, as well as developing and maintaining communication
vehicles.
Foley supports
seven dedicated and active affinity groups for our women, African-American,
Asian-Pacific American, Hispanic, openly gay and lesbian attorneys, attorneys
who work a flexible schedule, as well as a pilot group in San Francisco
for working parents. These groups offer an open forum for idea exchange
and a platform for peer support, and members are increasingly utilizing
these networks to advance their own professional and personal growth.
These groups are also vital in fostering informal mentoring relationships,
encouraging participation in recruiting activities, and identifying and
coordinating business development opportunities.
Recruitment
Our recruiting
philosophy reflects the firm’s strong commitment to diversity. We
consciously reach out to diverse law student associations at schools across
the country to ultimately identify candidates and build a pipeline of
diverse law school recruits – while also raising awareness about
our firm and providing a vehicle to cultivate personal relationships with
the students. Our National Recruiting Committee is enriched through the
inclusion of women and ethnically diverse attorneys, and diverse attorneys
throughout all of our offices are actively involved in on-campus and office
interviews.
We have also
accelerated the growth in the overall diversity of our firm through strategic
diverse lateral hiring. In the past year, the firm appointed a National
Lateral Hiring Partner and National Lateral Hiring Manager to centralize
and manage the process of identifying and recruiting non-partner lateral
candidates, including proactive and aggressive recruitment of diverse
attorneys. By creating professional positions to focus on this objective,
we have built better relationships with diverse headhunting agencies,
refined our job fair activities, and refocused our internal referral programs.
We are also
committed to diversifying the legal profession as a whole. Concerned that
too many ethnically diverse law students were opting out of large firm
environments, we created our Minority
Scholarship Program in 1998, believed to be the first of its kind.
Through this program, we award $5,000 scholarships to ethnically diverse
students at a number of law schools across the country. To date, we have
awarded nearly $400,000 in scholarships. We are also proud to underwrite
the Sidney B. Williams, Jr. Intellectual Property Law Scholarships, created
to increase the diversity of intellectual property law practitioners.
Retention
Creating an
environment where all of our attorneys receive the support they need to
thrive and succeed professionally and personally is paramount to our overall
success. As a firm, we encourage career development opportunities for
all of our attorneys and have well-established mentoring and professional
development programs. Affinity group members play an active role in mentoring
and providing career development coaching to our diverse attorneys, and
reach out to the firm’s diverse associates/summer associates to
facilitate their transition to the firm. These groups also play a valuable
role in connecting our diverse attorneys across the country, providing
informal mentoring relationships and opportunities to work collectively
projects, as well as reaching out to the firm’s new diverse associates/summer
associates to facilitate their transition to the firm.
We also recognize
the need to accommodate our talent by providing progressive, family-friendly
policies. Our Flexible Schedule policy makes part-time and other alternative
work schedule arrangements readily available to attorneys for the purpose
of meeting their needs for child or elder care. Flex schedule attorneys
remain eligible for partnership, and a number of flex schedule attorneys
have been promoted to partner. We also offer paid parental leave to both
men and women (including for adoption), as well as emergency child and
elder care services.
Promotion
We continually
encourage a healthy mix of ideas and perspectives by ensuring that diverse
attorneys are included at all levels of management. For example:
- Two women
partners, including an African American woman, serve on the Management
Committee, the most powerful and influential committee within the firm
- One of our
four department chairs is an African American woman
- Five of
our offices are managed by women, one of whom is a lesbian and one of
whom is African American
- Over 30%
of our practice groups and industry teams are chaired by ethnically
diverse, women, and gay and lesbian attorneys
- Over 30%
of our firm committee members are diverse
- In the past
several years, we doubled the percentage of women attorneys responsible
for managing relationships with the firm’s top clients, and tripled
the percentage of ethnically diverse relationship partners
External
Diversity Efforts
Foley is also
fully committed to sponsoring and supporting national and local legal
organizations that promote diversity within the legal profession. Our
attorneys participate in, and the firm financially supports, diverse legal
organizations such as the Minority Corporate
Counsel Association (MCCA), the California
Minority Counsel Program (CMCP), the National
Bar Association (NBA), the National
Lesbian and Gay Bar Association, the Hispanic
National Bar Association (HNBA), the National
Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA).
Other non-legal
community organizations with which we are involved include – but
are not limited to – Women
President’s Organization (WPO), National
Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), Boardroom
Bound®, Human Rights Campaign,
Count Me In for Women’s
Economic Independence and it’s Make
Mine a $Million Program, and Springboard
Enterprise.
We have developed
a unique initiative designed to support women-owned businesses while at
the same time fostering professional development opportunities for our
women attorneys. One of our strategic alliances formed is with the ATHENAPowerLink
mentoring program, which offers women business owners access to a panel
of advisors/mentors. As a founding sponsor of this program, Foley provides
financial support, has a number of attorneys participating as advisors/mentors
to women business owners, and was instrumental in launching the program
in Chicago, Orlando, Jacksonville and Detroit – and is a founding
sponsor for the San Francisco program to be launched in 2007.
Foley recently
partnered with Springboard Enterprise to launch a Web Conference series
entitled “Legal:GPS – Growth and Protection
Strategies to Help Navigate Your Business Success.”
This series was designed specifically for women business-owners to provide
them with guidance when growing a business and features case studies from
actual women business owners and is supplemented by insightful commentary
and feedback from Foley women attorneys who specialize in those specific
areas. Our first program on “CEO
Employment Contracts: What to Know and What to Avoid” occurred
on May 3, 2007 and was very well received by the attendees.
In conjunction
with Springboard Enterprise, Foley has also created a Women’s Business
Owners’ Resource Center Web site at www.womenlegalresource.com.
This site provides key information and resources to women business-owners
on various legal topics which are helpful when starting and growing a
business. Such topics include Private Equity & Venture Capital, Distribution
& Franchise, Intellectual Property, Labor & Employment, and more.
Recognition
Garnered
We continue
to take concrete actions to increase diversity within the firm, as well
as in our profession and communities – and we continue to make positive
strides and view each accomplishment as one of many steps forward to achieving
a more diverse and enriching legal environment. Foley’s dedication
to increasing diversity has garnered recent prestigious awards
and recognitions:
- Awarded
the California Minority Counsel Program’s (CMCP) 2006 Drucilla
Stender Ramey Award in recognition of our strong and ongoing commitment
to diversity
- Scored
95 percent on Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) 2006 Corporate Equality
Index, a report on LGBT benefits within corporate America
- Named among
the top three law firms for women in Chicago in 2006, Presumed Equal:
What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms
- Awarded
the 2006 Entrepreneurial
Star Award from Business Women’s Network and Diversity Best
Practices
- Recognized
in 2006 as a “Top 25 Law Firm for Disabled Attorneys and Gay/Lesbian
Attorneys” by MultiCultural Law magazine
- Included
in the “Top 100 Law Firms for Diversity” in 2007 and 2005
by MultiCultural Law magazine
- Named among
the Bay Area firms and legal departments having the most women in management
and women partners in 2005 by the Bar Association of the San Francisco’s
No Glass Ceiling Initiative
For more information
about Foley & Lardner’s commitment to diversity, please contact
our Chief Diversity Partner – Maureen McGinnity – at mmginnity@foley.com,
and/or our Director of Diversity – Michelle Michaels – at
mmichaels@foley.com.
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