At Baker Donelson, we strive to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all our employees. We welcome people of all races, genders, ages, languages, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, disabilities, sexual orientations and religious beliefs to assist our clients in achieving their legal goals. We understand and salute the unique perspectives and approaches that are provided by differences in educational background, socio-economic background, personality profile, geographic location, job duties, marital and family status.
Our goal is to create an atmosphere at our Firm that honors the diverse quality in each of our employees. To that end, in addition to our everyday approach to inclusion, we created a Diversity Committee that counts our Chairman and CEO, COO, two Office Managing Shareholders, two board members and a Practice Group leader among its ranks. Meeting once a month, the Committee's job is to oversee and implement the Firm's diversity initiatives.
In cultivating different ideas and perspectives, we strive to exceed expectations by encouraging our attorneys and supporting our attorneys in activities that promote diversity. We support Charles Grant, a shareholder who was awarded the 2009 Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year Award for his work on issues of disenfranchisement and restoration of voter rights. Additionally, we have engaged in many activities and organizations to encourage inclusion:
- We established the Baker Donelson Diversity Scholarship Program for law students. Through it, recipients of the three annual scholarships are awarded a salaried second-year law student Summer Associate position, and $10,000 is paid during the students' third year of law school to help defray the cost of tuition and related expenses.
- We provide funding for the Baker Donelson Internship Program at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI). Three interns are chosen from an application process and are assigned to positions in education, archives or public relations to support the BCRI mission, which is "to promote civil and human rights worldwide through education."
- We participated in the Nashville Bar Association High School Internship Program, which led to us hiring a high school student in our Nashville office for the summers of 2008 and 2009.
- We regularly co-sponsor Nashville's Minority Enterprise Development (MED) Week and other similar events. Each event provides a forum to discuss the continued growth and development of minority business enterprises.
- We have been the primary sponsor of the Birmingham Business Journal's inaugural Best in Minority Business Awards, which celebrates the spirit, creativity and resourcefulness of minority business leaders and companies promoting and achieving diversity in their business. We have continued to be a sponsor every year since then.
- We implemented and completed mandatory Inclusion Training for the entire Firm. In 2008, we retained a consultant to train several attorneys and staff members to deepen the discussion on inclusion and diversity, then allotted billing credit for the attorneys who performed the training. We continue the program now with lunch programs for attorneys and staff to continue the dialogue.
- We are participating members in the Atlanta and Nashville Stonewall Bar Associations, and are active in LGBT business organizations.
- We regularly reward achievement by our diverse staff for their accomplishments.
We understand that changes will not be achieved by good intentions alone. In order to achieve meaningful, measurable and lasting progress toward greater inclusion of racially and ethnically diverse legal talent, it is necessary for us to not only commit philosophically to those goals, but also to commit resources, individually and collectively, towards activities that we as a Firm believe will have a positive impact.
At the beginning of the Firm's diversity initiative, in 2002, we had seven minority attorneys. We outlined a goal of increasing our minority attorney population by 100% in two years, and we met it. Today, we have 40 minority attorneys and nearly 190 women attorneys, and are always looking for diverse talent.
- We actively recruit at historically African-American law schools, such as North Carolina Central and Southern University. Our Recruiting Committee is currently working with attorneys in our Diversity Committee and throughout the Firm to explore new ways of widening our field of candidates.
- Our summer associate program has seen a steady growth of diverse students, and our fall recruiting classes have also seen a substantial increase.
- We established a mentoring program for our diverse associates and are preparing them for leadership positions throughout our Firm.
- We have created an initiative to reach out to diverse undergraduate students to help them achieve their goal of entering the legal field. "Bringing Diversity to Our Businesses" is led by two female minority attorneys, demonstrating our dedication to encourage more minorities to attend law school and our commitment to grow leaders from within our own ranks.
Female and minority attorneys currently serve as chair or co-chair of four of our 19 practice groups, and serve or have recently served as two of our ten managing shareholders. Two female and one minority shareholder serve on the Board of Directors, and numerous committees are chaired by minority and female lawyers. Women head several administrative departments, including our Attorney Recruitment and Human Resources.
We regularly discuss diversity and our progress at attorney and shareholder retreats; our CEO and Diversity Chair have spoken about how Baker Donelson attorneys and clients increasingly desire and expect a diverse team of attorneys to be engaged in the Firm's work. At the most recent Firm retreat, representatives from three prominent clients served as panel members to discuss the importance of diversity in the legal profession. Our Recruiting Committees have attorneys from very diverse backgrounds.
We have implemented a flex time policy for our attorneys, allowing lawyers to deviate from the standard billable-hour format. We support the desire of our attorneys to balance a challenging professional career with their personal lives and other outside interests and responsibilities.
We have not completed our journey. Baker Donelson attorneys continue to seek leadership opportunities and to encourage our attorneys to be active in the community.
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