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Diversity Lab announced Thursday the launch of its inaugural Mansfield Rule: Legal Department Edition with more than 20 corporate legal departments on board to help foster diversity within in-house legal leadership.

The program serves as an extension to the Mansfield Rule, which was designed for law firms to find ways to put underrepresented attorneys on matters and on a path to partnership.

Legal departments in the pilot program track and record who is in their candidate pool and, at the end of the year, the general counsel submits the statistics to Diversity Lab. The program asks legal departments to consider at least 50% underrepresented candidates for internal roles and when hiring outside counsel.

In an email, Jim Chosy, chief legal officer of U.S. Bank, said joining the program has brought even more discipline to his legal department's internal efforts and how it engages outside counsel.

"I'm proud of the results we've generated thus far and the interest and enthusiasm we're seeing from our team and outside counsel," Chosy said.

Lisa Kirby, chief intelligence and knowledge sharing officer at Diversity Lab, said one of the important aspects of the program is knowledge sharing.

"We think a lot of legal departments have been wanting to include something like this," Kirby said. "They have been working more or less on their own and not collectively in the same sense."

Those who participate in the program have the opportunity to troubleshoot with each other at different knowledge events.

Leila Hock, senior manager of legal department partnerships and inclusion initiatives at Diversity Lab, said the program helps to foster transparency in job descriptions and what it takes to make it in a legal department.

"In joining the pilot for the Mansfield Rule: Legal Department Edition, we have not only institutionalized our department's commitment to increasing diversity in the law, but are backed by the support of a community committed to solving this issue, which has proven invaluable as we implement the rule," Deborah Rasin, senior vice president and chief legal officer at Hill-Rom Services Inc., said in the press release.

The legal departments of 22 companies have signed on to the yearlong program. Those companies are: Axiom, BASF Corp., Compass Minerals, Davita Inc., Delta Dental of California, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Ford Motor Co., Gap Inc., Hill-Rom, Jacksonville Jaguars, LendingClub Corp., Lincoln Financial Group, MassMutual, PayPal Holdings Inc., SurveyMonkey Inc., Symantec Corp., ThredUp Inc., Turo Inc., Uber Technologies Inc., U.S. Bank, VF Corp. and Voya Financial Inc.

The program began in July, and Hock said she expects there to be more legal departments signing on when Diversity Lab begins accepting applications in July 2020.

Chosy said legal departments should consider becoming involved in the program.

"This has undoubtedly generated more conversation and collaboration about [diversity, equity and inclusion] and the profession, which is always a good thing," Chosy said. "I'm glad to see that we're turning the flywheel. The more engagement and muscle we have behind this, the better it is for everyone."