After 200 top lawyers at various companies signed a letter last year demanding law firms pay greater attention to diversity, firms seem to now be eager to hear the thoughts of their clients on how to best foster diversity.

This is what a group of majority in-house counsel said Tuesday at a panel titled "When Opportunity Knocks: As GCs Actively Seek Diverse Counsel, How Do You Get the Work?" at ALM's annual Legalweek conference at the New York Hilton Midtown.

Leila Hock, director of legal department partnerships and inclusion efforts at Diversity Lab, moderated the panel that included Mitch Zuklie, chairman and CEO of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; James Chosy, executive vice president and general counsel of U.S. Bancorp; and Annette Bernstein, chief labor and employment counsel at American International Group Inc.

"This is a source of clearer communication," Zuklie said. "There is a lot more collaboration between firms and clients in a way that is welcome."

Chosy said over the past couple of years he has been more up-front with his approximately 40 preferred firms on the importance of diversity. He said he's made it clear that he wants to work with firms who follow the Mansfield Rule, now the main measuring tool for whether law firms and legal departments have considered women, LGBTQ+, lawyers with disabilities, and racial and ethnic minority lawyers for top roles.

"These kinds of conversations didn't use to happen," he said. "What we're seeing now is there is a lot more of that. Corporate law departments and law firms are much less defensive about what we need to do."

Bernstein told the audience it is apparent when firms are just checking certain boxes and not interested in real change.

"We have a GC who has been with us for two years and she has made it known to the law firms that we work with that this is important to us," Bernstein said.

She said firms pitching their services to AIG are showing their commitment to diversity. However, she cautioned that firms should bring in diverse attorneys for pitches and also have them work on the matters.

"We've seen pitches where there is no diversity at all," Bernstein said. "Sometimes the firms will own it and say, 'We've been working on it and we're just not there yet,' and that is a data point for us. Then we see larger teams where they do bring diverse teams and the diverse attorneys do not have any part in the actual pitch."

Law firms, she said, should no longer have to be told by their clients that diversity is a requirement but rather expect it and understand they will not get a client's money if they aren't making efforts toward diversity.