Overview: Meet the GCs Who May Finally Move the Needle on Diversity
General counsel are done with dangling carrots when it comes to improving outside counsel's diversity efforts. They've moved to the stick, with some GCs withholding fees from firms that don't meet their diversity requirements. Programs like this, coming from some of the country's largest companies, are not always met with positivity.
May 24, 2017 at 01:56 PM
11 minute read
Even as some general counsel of major U.S. corporations take a harder line with Big Law on diversity, the results of our Diversity Scorecard show that the proportion of minorities in large law firms continues to stagnate.
Minority lawyers working in Am Law 200 firms and NLJ 250 firms stood at just 15.6 percent in 2016, up from 15.0 percent in 2015. The percentage of minority partners among the firms also saw only incremental growth, up only 0.4 percentage points to reach 8.6 percent last year.
Trying to boost those percentages, especially in the partner ranks, general counsel at Facebook Inc., HP and Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. have all announced in recent months initiatives that will require more diversity among their outside counsel—or put those firms at risk of losing fees.
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