Only two Atlanta-based firms, Morris Manning & Martin and Troutman Sanders, are among 41 Am Law firms nationally to achieve a new diversity milestone, Mansfield Rule certification.

That means that at least 30 percent of the candidates these firms considered over the last year for leadership roles, equity partner promotions and senior lateral positions were women or lawyers of color.

What's more, Morris Manning was the only Atlanta-based firm out of 27 total to achieve “Mansfield Certification Plus” for having women or lawyers of color actually make up 30 percent of its leadership.

Louise Wells of Morris, Manning & Martin, Atlanta.

The firms winning Mansfield certification were out of roughly 50 that signed up for the Mansfield Rule pilot project launched by legal consultancy Diversity Lab last year.

In addition to Morris Manning and Troutman, there were seven firms out of the 41 achieving Mansfield certification that have an Atlanta location: Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Dentons, DLA Piper, Fish & Richardson, Holland & Knight, Littler Mendelson and Seyfarth Shaw.

Besides Morris Manning, only five other firms with Atlanta offices attained “plus” status for having at least 30 percent women and lawyers of color as actual leaders: Bryan Cave, DLA Piper, Fish & Richardson, Holland & Knight and Seyfarth Shaw.

Morris Manning's managing partner, Louise Wells, said a client who knew of the firm's interest in advancing diversity told them about the Mansfield Rule pilot. “We thought we were already meeting the criteria when we signed up, but these were different, outside measurements,” she said.

“It helped us to benchmark and to be very intentional,” said Kate Pearch, the firm's chief marketing officer.

Before participating in the Mansfield Rule project, firm leaders would informally talk about making sure diverse candidates were included for committee nominations or appointments, but they had never tracked it before, Wells said.

That said, Morris Manning didn't have to make any big changes in behavior to achieve the targets, Pearch said, “because diversity was already very important to the firm.”

“The statistics out there are pretty bleak if you look at industry averages,” Pearch added. “We're higher in women partners, and we have more women in management, for instance.”

The Mansfield Rule—named for Arabella Mansfield, the first woman admitted to the practice of law in the U.S.—was one of the winning ideas from the Women in Law Hackathon that Diversity Lab held two years ago with Bloomberg Law and Stanford Law School. It was inspired by the NFL's Rooney Rule, created in 2003 by the late Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney. The Rooney Rule requires every NFL team to interview at least one minority candidate for head coach and general manager vacancies, which has doubled the number of minorities hired to fill those roles.

“Diversity in law firms has been stagnant for decades, so we didn't expect to change law firm cultures overnight,” said Lisa Kirby, who oversees the program for Diversity Lab, in a statement.

The Mansfield Rule pilot is already changing the way the participating firms operate, however. Now, 100 percent of the 41 firms achieving Mansfield certification are tracking candidate pools for leadership roles (up from 30 percent); senior associate lateral hiring (up from 28 percent); partner lateral hiring (up from 20 percent); and equity partner promotions (up from 60 percent).

Diversity Lab asked firms to track eight leadership areas: equity partnership promotions, partnership promotions, nominating committees, the executive committee, the compensation committee, practice group leadership, office heads and managing partners.

Not only are the 41 Mansfield certified firms tracking candidate pipelines “for every single path that leads to leadership,” said Kirby, but “a significant number of firms have increased the diversity of these pipelines, which is a positive step toward diversifying their next generation of leaders.”

Mansfield 2.0

Sixty-five big firms have signed up for Mansfield 2.0, including two additional firms in Atlanta, Eversheds Sutherland and Womble Bond Dickinson.

This round, which started in July and will run for a year, tracks LGBTQ lawyers in addition to women and minorities as part of candidate pools and asks participants to make leadership appointment and election processes transparent to all lawyers in the firm. Also new, Mansfield 2.0 will measure consideration for roles in client pitch meetings.

Mansfield certification could help firms court and retain clients, since dozens of large companies support the project.

Firms achieving the certifications will send newly promoted women and minority partners to client forums organized by Diversity Lab in New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis, where they can meet in-house lawyers from more than 60 companies, including, AIG, Baxter Healthcare, Cargill, Dell, GAP, HP Inc., Salesforce, SurveyMonkey and Walmart.