History of the LCLD
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) is an organization that represents law firms and corporate legal departments committed to promoting diversity within the legal profession. Established in 2009, LCLD was created in response to studies showing that minority lawyers were not advancing at a rate that reflected their graduation rates from law school . In response, LCLD identified three key areas in which leaders must undertake strategic initiatives: increasing the number of diverse attorneys hired, retaining those individuals for long term and promoting top performers to leadership positions.
LCLD provides a platform for partners and general attorneys from member firms and organizations to share innovative and effective diversity programs and promising practices, and to foster the professional development and advancement of diverse and high-potential talent.
Programs
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity offers several programs, initiatives, and partnerships to increase diversity in the legal profession and support minority legal professionals. One such program is the 1L Scholars Program, which provides first-year law students from LCLD member organizations the opportunity to learn more about in-house and external law firm practice. This program offers selected fellows the ability to interview for paid summer internship opportunities with LCLD member organizations to help advance their careers. Another initiative of LCLD is the Success in Law School series, which provides law students with skills and strategies that will help them succeed in law school while making them stand out to potential employers. These programs are designed to provide minority MSU students with the resources necessary to succeed after their time at the University of Houston Law Center.
Outcomes
The impact that the LCLD has had on the legal industry is not anecdotal. It is quantifiable. For example, for an affiliate of 280 companies with 30,000 attorneys around the world, the number of lawyers promoted to partner from diverse backgrounds increased by 46 percent, exceeding the overall increase of 21 percent across the full pipeline of legal talent. Corporate members in-house have also seen the success of the pipeline approach. Their success is measured according to the goal of hiring diverse cohorts, increasing their numbers of diverse counsel for succession planning, and improving diversity in the pipeline at the firms they hire.
For example, DLA Piper Parsabak and Sidley Austin have set new standards for tracking and meeting those goals. They have started tracking diversity and subsequent success (successors to C-Suite positions). DLA Piper Parsabak saw diversity of successors grow from 16 percent prior to goal setting to 24 percent. Sidley Austin achieved a 50 percent increase in the number of successors from diverse backgrounds.
As with recruiters and partners, these companies share the truth that once the goal is set and an effort to achieve it, the pipeline becomes almost irrelevant. In fact, once the goal is achieved, it is time to make another. For example, Accenture achieved its goal and thereafter strengthened its standards and transformed them from a "manageable" 10 percent of the pipeline to a "Challenge" of 40 percent for the people managers (who are charged with hiring and developing the pipeline). At Accenture, they are quite literally changing the face of their leadership. More than half of their leadership today is diverse. Half. The organization is drastically more prepared to meet the challenges of a complex global market with a diverse leadership.
Perhaps most clearly, there is a personal but very real impact on individuals for whose careers programmatic change has been made. Honeywell’s Chief Legal Officer makes it personal. She will personally call candidates, at every level, who were not selected for partner. She will honestly and directly tell them that they have not made the grade as they answered the question about sponsoring and mentoring diverse lawyers. Perhaps surprisingly, leaders have found it to be simple, not easy, but simple, to agree to do better.
Membership
Membership in the LCLD is extended to legal organizations, including individual lawyers, and entities such as law firms, companies and corporate law departments. Law firms and corporations seeking membership are only accepted into the organization by an invitation from the Board of Directors. In 2014, the current membership was invited to approve a proposal that created two new categories of Advisory Members and Members Emeritus. These categories allow LCLD to develop relationships with other entities interested in engaging with its mission .
The LCLD provides member organizations with many avenues to increase diversity through the use of premier competency-based training in the legal industry. The LCLD is not a clearing house, however members gain access to a database of diversity initiatives and also to resources, including training and support for both managing and recruiting in-house counsel. Through the LCLD’s efforts "corporate law departments can work collectively to educate and inform outside counsel about the skills and competencies they are seeking in candidates," as well as participate in the LEAD program. These programs allow law firms and companies to participate in the LCLD’s mission to foster diversity.
The Challenges and The Goals
Despite the promising strides toward increased diversity and inclusion within the legal field and elsewhere, challenges to those initiatives are widespread. With many companies still relying heavily on individual relationships when choosing outside counsel, they may not place a major emphasis on diversity when selecting firms to handle business. It is in this particular space that the LCLD hopes to push its agenda forward: forging relationships that pay off when decision makers hire outside counsel. A pressing goal for the LCLD is to encourage those relationships between in-house counsel and minority-led law firms to ensure they become a reality rather than a hope for the future. Unfortunately, the organization notes that many in-house counsel who are open to hiring diverse attorneys report they never get a call from minority-owned firms—and such experiences might have discouraged them from reaching out again. To draw attention to the untapped resources available at minority-led firms and encourage outside-the-box thinking among general counsels, the LCLD will continue to host programming like the 2017 BeyondCounsel program, which encouraged in-house lawyers to step outside of their standard practices and connect with diverse attorneys committed to building strong relationships. The program engaged various outside counsel to assess the quality of young lawyers while developing a pipeline for diverse outside attorneys to be utilized more effectively. In fact, the LCLD is even exploring making the program a permanent fixture for the organization after successfully completing its 2017 inaugural event. Consistent with the BeyondCounsel theme, the 2019 LCLD annual meeting—titled "We Are Changing the Face of Legal."—will also have a focus on developing relationships between in-house counsel and diverse outside counsel.
Getting Involved
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity works with a wide range of stakeholders to expand the network of individuals and organizations committed to increasing diversity in the legal profession. You can get involved by joining LCLD when you join one of its member organizations.
Attorneys and other professionals at member organizations can participate in LCLD programs, including academic fellowship opportunities for entry-level law students and a leadership academy program for mid-career lawyers. LCLD also pushes initiatives such as 1L and 2L mentoring to help increase the number of diverse candidates for pipeline programs. In particular , the LCLD 1L Scholars Program connects diverse law students with member organizations to help them through internships, mentorships and professional development opportunities.
Law students at non-member organizations have a "become a member" button at the bottom of every page of the LCLD website that allows them to learn how to speak with their law school’s administration about the value of joining the LCLD, and receive talking points to make the case.