Efforts to improve diversity in the legal profession have spread well beyond Big Law, with issues of recruitment and inclusion falling squarely at the feet of plaintiffs firms' leaders. And many of them are finding a business imperative to get more effective on both fronts.

"If you get an appointment, you have to really knock it out of the park," said Parvin K. Aminolroaya, a partner with Seeger Weiss in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, and one of the first female attorneys of color to serve as a co-lead counsel in a multidistrict litigation mass tort.

She joined Seeger Weiss straight out of law school and quickly rose up the ranks to now represent plaintiffs in cases such as the Elmiron (Pentosan Polysulfate Sodium) Products Liability Litigation. Early this year, U.S. District Judge Brian Martinotti of the District of New Jersey appointed Aminolroaya one of three co-lead counsel in the Elmiron litigation.