Left to Right, Anna Brown of Baker & McKenzie, Lisa Kremer Brown of Starbucks, Sophia Davis of Oracle and Lisa Brzycki of Northwestern Mutual. Photo credit: Caroline Spiezio/ALM.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives are on the rise in corporations, yet some in-house lawyers don't understand their role or where to start.

A Tuesday panel at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's 2018 annual institute aimed to address this problem, with corporate legal leaders coming together to discuss what diversity and inclusion looks like at their companies and which strategies have been their most successful.

“Our goal is to not only improve the diversity of our own workforce but to also try and improve the diversity of the vendors with which we do business, including outside counsel,” said Lisa Kremer Brown, the managing director of operations and strategy for law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corp. ”When retaining outside counsel, the department encourages our lawyers to ensure that we're selecting firms that uphold our diversity and inclusion expectations.”

She said Starbucks has also issued an annual survey to their top 25 firms for the past 10 years to assess their outside counsel's diversity and inclusion efforts. Starbucks' survey looks at a number of factors, including trends over time, turnover, promotion to partnership and, as of this year, how the origination credit is awarded. The firm with the best record on diversity receives the Starbucks Law & Corporate Affairs Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion Award.

Sophia Davis, the senior legal operations program manager at Oracle, said her company requires panel firms to be transparent about diversity and inclusion initiatives.

“We measure, report and partner with [our firms] on diversity, and it's part of their business review,” Davis said. “We also utilize data from our tracker, e-billing system and our HR reporting.”

Lisa Brzycki, the director of legal operations and technology at Northwestern Mutual, added that it's also important for corporate legal leaders to look internally, and ensure people of all backgrounds feel welcome and included in the department. She says her department does regular unscripted roundtables to discuss inclusion. 

“When you say, 'ask outside counsel,' ask inside. You'll be surprised what answers you get,” Brzycki said.

Her legal team also has a mentorship program with a local high school, something co-panelist Anna Brown, the director of global diversity and inclusion at Baker & McKenzie, said is important to boost the pipeline of diverse talent in the law.

Brown will work alongside the other panelists and the panel's moderator, regional operating officer for North America at Baker & McKenzie, Gavin Gray, to lead a new CLOC diversity and inclusion initiative. Gray said the initiative will be announced on the consortium's website later this week.