Joel Stern, the Chicago-based CEO of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms, has put off his retirement plans for approximately six months to steer the organization through the coronavirus pandemic.

In September 2018, Stern announced that he planned on retiring from his CEO role in September 2020.

"The goal of doing that was that I was going to pass the baton to my successor and they would take over NAMWOLF on a high note and take it to the next high note," Stern explained.

However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the board felt it did not make sense to change leadership during a time of crisis. Stern will now retire in February 2021.

"Joel and his team have done a superlative job of really driving NAMWOLF forward by helping to build its base of corporate partners and increasing the number of member firms," John Murdock, chairman of the NAMWOLF board and a shareholder at Potter & Murdock in Falls Church, Virginia, said during an interview. "Given that there is a great deal of confidence in Joel, that he knows the organization and is really trusted, we thought it would make sense not to try to change the leadership."

Finding the next CEO

NAMWOLF began its search process in January and the application period ended in February. Murdock said the board received approximately 20 applications and narrowed them down to nine candidates to take to the next round. The applicants, Murdock explained, were told that there had been a pause in the process.

The hiring process for a new CEO will likely begin again in August. Murdock said they will continue with the nine applicants they chose for the second round and hope to have a job offer for someone by the end of 2020. Stern said he is a part of the search committee for his replacement but has recused himself from selecting his successor. He explained that he would like for the next CEO to have a different "makeup" than he does.

"I don't want to pick someone unconsciously who walks and talks like me. I think there is a benefit to bring in someone very different than me to bring in new thoughts and new ideas that can take NAMWOLF to the next level," Stern said.

Apart from being passionate about diversity and inclusion, the next CEO of NAMWOLF should be someone who can go between corporations and law firms and understand the concerns of both.

"We need to have someone who understands the business of law firms for the size and nature of our firms. We also need somebody who has a good understanding of our corporate partners," Murdock said.

An in-house legal role is not a prerequisite for the CEO role at NAMWOLF, Murdock said, but candidates should be able to effectively communicate with in-house counsel and show the importance of working with NAMWOLF firms.

Next steps for Stern

Even with retirement on the horizon, Stern is not done evangelizing the importance of using diverse firms during the pandemic.

Law firms and corporate legal departments had been making strides toward diversity and inclusion until the Great Recession. Then those efforts took a back seat and took years to get back to where they were prerecession, Stern explained.

"Today is the time even more than pre-COVID-19 to focus on giving our firms that opportunity because diversity and inclusion is critical and not something you ignore in bad times," Stern said.

While there are no hard numbers in yet on how diversity and inclusion efforts are going during the pandemic, Stern said there are signs that diversity and inclusion efforts have not fallen by the wayside during the pandemic.

He explained that NAMWOLF's website traffic has been increasing and corporate legal departments and large law firms are reaching out to find ways to work with NAMWOLF firms. However, it is still too soon to truly say they were successful during the pandemic.

"How you measure whether we're successful or not is two years from now: Did our firms get the same or more opportunities than they were getting pre-COVID-19?" said Stern.

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