Conference Lacks Women Speakers But Makes Up For It With Showgirls

Diversity isn't something you can outsource. It requires the effort of everyone.

white men white male lawyers partners diversityAvvo is a company that claims to “make legal easier and help people find a lawyer.” Each year, it puts on a popular conference called Lawyernomics. Here’s the conference description from its website:

Get inspired with strategies and tactics that will help you best market and manage your firm, from social media tips and tricks to the latest technology platforms to how to brand your firm. And, of course, network with fellow lawyers from around the country.

Perhaps they should add that this is the conference to attend if you want to have men talk at you all day.

Here’s how the conference breaks down:[1]

Friday, April 21, 2017: 9 men, 0 women
Saturday, April 22, 2017: 6 men, 4 women

Look a bit deeper and you’ll notice that two out of the four women were allotted only 6 minutes each to speak.

People of color (POC) are harder to identify, but scrolling through the speaker’s list, it appears there are perhaps three or four POC.

Sponsored

There’s something troubling about a conference put on by men with showgirls as entertainment. (Sometimes, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.)

I happened to look at this conference because my friend Patrick Palace Tweeted this:

lawyernomics diversity

Avvo’s conference is far from the only legal conference that suffers from a lack of diversity. (See here, here, here, and here.) Yet, there’s something very puzzling about the lack of diversity and inclusion at Lawyernomics.

Avvo is in the business of serving consumers looking for an attorney. One thing we know for certain is that Americans are becoming more diverse. According to the Pew Research Center:

Sponsored

Americans are more racially and ethnically diverse than in the past, and the U.S. is projected to be even more diverse in the coming decades. By 2055, the U.S. will not have a single racial or ethnic majority.

Additionally, millennials “are the most racially diverse generation in American history: 43% of millennial adults are non-white.”

Yet, all the “featured speakers and experts” are white men (except for one) who also appear to be similar in age:

lawyernomics speakers

Interestingly, if you scroll through Avvo’s consumer-facing website, you’ll see pictures of diversity. A black woman who might be a business owner, an Indian woman looking for an immigration lawyer, an Asian woman with a cute kid perhaps needing a divorce attorney. Are these images just a veneer?

Take a look at Avvo’s leadership team. There are only two women on the leadership team out of nine. (Note that the women are also on the very bottom of the leadership board.) Only two people on the leadership team appear to be POC. Given the lack of diversity on its leadership team, small surprise that it can put on a conference where you can spend an entire day listening to only men. Let me state that more accurately: an entire day listening to white men.

This is problematic on multiple levels.

First, it’s futile to try and gain the trust of diverse communities when a company’s leadership and conference are anything but diverse. Claiming to be “passionate about diversity” is meaningless without action.

Second, diversity encourages people with different backgrounds and different life experiences to come together and ask questions that may not be asked in a monochromatic group. The questions that are asked will set a path for what data is gathered. It also impacts how the data is analyzed and interpreted.

I question whether Avvo is optimally situated to serve the needs of consumers that are and will continue to be more diverse than ever before.

As I discussed in my previous post, there are a few ways in which we can all contribute to increasing diversity:

First, if you see a lack of women or POC on the speakers list, contact the conference organizers and let them know this is not acceptable. It’s simple: if you see something, say something. You can also nominate them for this Tumblr page: Congrats, you have an all-male panel!

Second, if you are a male lawyer and you care about diversity and inclusion, don’t speak on all-male panels. Better yet, offer your seat on an all-white-male panel to a woman. like this guy did. If you are unwilling or unable to do this, then please, don’t claim that you “care” about diversity.

Third, if you are an attendee, stop attending conferences that continue to perpetuate exclusion. Spend your $750 on a conference that’s doing more to embrace diversity and inclusion than simply putting pictures of women or POC on its website or on its PowerPoint presentation. Undoubtedly, your own client base will become more diverse with time, so why would you want to attend a conference that’s an echo chamber?

Finally, for conference organizers, diversity isn’t something you can outsource. It requires the effort of everyone. Diversity also attracts diversity, so don’t be surprised that a token woman or POC on your planning committee can’t “fix” your diversity problem.

[1] These numbers were based on the information available on the website as of April 22, 2017 at 8:34 A.M. PDT. Since then, Avvo has updated its website and added five additional women (all white) for Thursday, April 20th. So Avvo appears to have responded — but I wonder how the women feel about not being given credit for speaking in the first place, then conveniently being added to the website on the closing day of the conference, after being called out on Avvo’s lack of diversity on social media.


Jeena Cho HeadshotJeena Cho is the author of The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation (affiliate link). She regularly speaks and offers training on mindfulness and meditation. You can reach her at hello@jeenacho.com or @jeena_cho on Twitter.