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Shifting outside legal work from the usual Big Law suspects to smaller, more diverse boutique law firms is being talked about as a way for in-house leaders to step up and drive diversity in the legal industry. But making that change can be complicated.  

While big firms tend to have a dearth of women and minority equity partners, they offer big firepower, which is attractive and comforting to companies, especially when they're looking to outsource complex, high-stakes legal matters. 

"If we're doing a huge M&A, we're going to use the usual suspects and we're going to be very vocal about asking for the team that's put together to be more diverse. And we've had success with that," said Elisheva Jasie, senior vice president of legal and licensing for Coty Inc., a global beauty products company based in New York.

"But what we're not going to do at this point is say, 'OK, our go-to trusted firm for bet-the-farm matters is not diverse enough so we're going to go to a smaller-level firm for this type of work,'" she added. 

Christoph Feddersen, vice president and general counsel of Collins Aerospace in West Palm Beach, Florida, said the company wants to move the needle on diversity. But he notes the firm operates in a "very traditional, very specific, highly regulatorily impacted and influenced industry.

"So we typically have our set of existing firms and it's very difficult for new firms, diversity-owned or not, to get in. We just have long-established relationships," he said. "If there is a diverse firm that can respond to our needs, we absolutely look at them. But we also look at our incumbent firms and make sure their diversity numbers increase."

Collins Aerospace's outside network of providers includes a regional, women-owned law firm. But Feddersen said the firm's primary selling point was its expertise in environmental law, rather than its size or diversity.

Jose Gonzalez, executive vice president, general counsel and the most senior ethnic minority member of Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp., one of the largest commercial insurers in the U.S., acknowledged that "smaller firms have the possibility to be more nimble." 

But he added the "bigger firms have more resources available to them and are taking diversity seriously. I have so many conversations with big law firms who ask me, 'What can we do to succeed?'"

Making a Case for Small Firms

General counsel and chief legal officers who might be pondering that same question should consider moving away from Big Law, according to Basha Rubin, CEO of Priori Legal. The company connects legal departments with boutique firms and lawyers.  

"A lot of women and minorities are leaving [big firms] and going to smaller law firms to practice. They're able to offer a higher level of services more cost-effectively," she said. "They're often not managing hundreds of big cases or matters. So you're able to get the same level of experience that you would at a big law firm without getting a second-year associate doing your work."  

Rubin said she's seeing companies test the boutique waters by hiring small firms for more routine or basic matters, and as they get more comfortable with the firms, they offer more substantial work. 

"Companies are setting fairly aggressive [diversity] targets and they're not able to meet those targets with smaller work," she said. "They're having to find ways to send more complex work to a variety of smaller firms. It's everything from managing multimillion-dollar litigation to running all external employment work for a major corporation to complex regulatory advice."  

Susannah Stroud Wright, general counsel of Credit Karma Inc. and a former associate GC at Tesla Inc., described boutique firms that have diverse partners as "very appealing." 

"We will be happy to go to someone if they are an expert or have unique experiences in a particular regulatory area, where we can work with them in kind of an ongoing day-to-day manner," she said. "Sometimes smaller and more boutique firms are more open to that rather than being so focused on it having to be just one huge corporate matter or litigation matter." 

'There Are No Easy Answers'

Wright and Eric Rucker, senior counsel at 3M Co. in St. Paul, Minnesota, both said their lists of outside firms include boutiques with diverse owners. 

"You need to have a mix of those firms in your network," Rucker said. "If you look around and do your homework today, there are plenty of boutique law firms out there who are big firm refugee lawyers who have gone and started a firm somewhere else. So you're not necessarily hiring a 'limited lawyer' that you can't trust with a big matter." 

Melissa Stull and George Soule qualify as Big Law refugees. Five years ago, they left Bowman and Brooke, where Soule was a founding partner, and hung a shingle for Soule & Stull, a boutique firm in Minneapolis that focuses on product liability and commercial litigation.

"We are women- and minority-owned. And that is most certainly attractive to clients," Stull said. "I think that's especially important in litigation and trial practice, to have a diverse trial team that looks like the jury you're going to be trying the case in front of."

Soule, who is Native American, acknowledged there are "some mega-cases that would be beyond our scope to handle. Not because of lack of horsepower, but just people power." But he added the firm's clients, which includes Vermeer Corp., a large manufacturing company, aren't "looking for some unknown trial lawyer in 50 locales around the country.

"They're looking for someone they know, someone they can trust will take on their case and do a good job for them wherever it is," he said.

Looking ahead, Jasie, the senior vice president of legal for Coty, predicts the push to use smaller, more diverse firms is going to grow—but not for top-level work. 

"The midlevel and below, that's where there's really an opportunity to be more of an equalizer in the firms that you go to," she said. "There's work to be done for all of us. Once you actually see the stats and ask the questions, you see that we're all trying to figure it out. There are no easy answers." 

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