As legal departments narrow their rosters of outside counsel to shortlists of preferred providers, they have greater leverage to set more rigorous diversity and inclusion expectations.

Law firms, consider this your notice: The days when your client—aka in-house legal departments—held a laissez-faire philosophy toward your talent management practices are over. As legal department leaders have surged to the peak of their influence during the last decade, they have repeatedly called on law firms to prioritize diversity. At first, they communicated their collective commitment by joining together to sign pledges such as the Statement of Principle and the Call to Action.

Those efforts were followed in the mid-2000s by legal departments asking their firms to complete comprehensive surveys that enabled the evaluation of diversity metrics. And, although companies have been surveying outside counsel diversity for years, the needle has not moved forward as much or as fast as expected.