Timothy Overton of Dickinson Wright speaks during a workshopping session on “Tech Meets Law: Diversifying Representation” during the National Bar Association's 94th Annual Convention at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City on July 23, 2019. He was joined by Julie Wenah, counsel, community operations at Airbnb, and Colette D. Honorable, a partner at Reed Smith. (Photo by David Handschuh/ALM)

A panel hosted by online hospitality service Airbnb and the National Bar Association, the nation's oldest and largest national network of African American attorneys, on Tuesday said tech firms and other big employers are taking steps to require outside law firms to be more diverse and inclusive, but more needs to be done.

The event titled “Tech Meets Law: Diversifying Representation,” hosted by Julie Wenah, community operations counsel of Airbnb Inc., and other panelists at the 94th annual NBA convention in New York City, asked attendees, who included lawyers from large and small firms as well as corporate law departments, to brainstorm ideas on how to increase minority representation at law firms.

Timothy Overton, a litigation member at Dickinson Wright in Phoenix; Colette Honorable, a partner at Reed Smith's energy and natural resources group in Washington, D.C.; and Jomaire Crawford, a senior associate in litigation at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in New York, also hosted the event. 

Overton cited Thomson Reuters data from October 2017 that found that only 6% of chief legal officers at companies had an organization program driving outside counsel diversity and that 10% were planning to implement such a program within the following year. Only 15% of general counsel surveyed ranked using diversity as a factor in law firm selection as a medium priority or greater, he said. 

“Firms should have their own initiatives … but a lot just won't until the money talks,” Overton said.

Efforts led by top executives at some companies are yielding results and need replicating, panel members said. Wenah, who formerly worked in the Obama administration, said at “Airbnb this is something our GC [Rob Chesnut] has made a priority. He doesn't like assuming there is a certain kind of person that is best.” 

Airbnb hired Melissa Thomas-Hunt as head of global diversity and belonging in May from Vanderbilt University. The company was buffeted by charges of racial bias on its home rental platform a couple years ago, after which it hired Covington & Burling partner and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to create new policies addressing discrimination by users.

In an interview following the panel discussion, Honorable said the next rung of in-house counsel under the GC is also vital to achieving measurable improvement in law firm diversity. The associate and assistant GCs can be very powerful in driving performance; the GC “can't do it alone,” she said.

Panel members highlighted companies that they said have taken meaningful steps to measure and/or incentivize diversity at law firms they use. Those companies included AT&T, 3M, NBCUniversal, Facebook and PepsiCo. Microsoft, they said, offers a 2% bonus on a prior year's fees if firms meet diversity goals, with additional bonuses available for additional benchmarks, including partner and management committee diversity. During the seven years the program has existed, Microsoft increased diversity on outside counsel teams by more than 15%, according to statistics provided by the panel. 

Panelists said a growing number of companies are requiring firms to produce their diversity statistics each year, and many are adding detailed questionnaires to make certain that diverse attorneys are actually billing on substantial matters and were not just brought along to pitch for business. Other panelists mentioned programs such as one pioneered by Walmart that hosts events for diverse attorneys whose firms later received business from those attorneys. 

Some attorneys attending the event from a major credit card issuer said that law firms had been dropped from representing the company after failing to improve their numbers for three years, a measure that panelists said more companies should consider.

Paulette Brown, a former president of the American Bar Association and a senior partner and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Locke Lord, who was a special guest speaker, said minorities and minority women also must be counted in the ranks of law firm partners and leaders in order for a firm to be considered truly diverse and inclusive. “If you have 1.8% minority women partners you can never be the best,” she said.

Read more:

New Take on 'Mansfield Rule' Sets In-House Diversity Goals

Legal Departments Join Law Firms in Applying the 'Mansfield Rule'

There's A Diversity Problem At Law Firms – What Can Be Done?