This week, Big Law Business published its Diversity and Inclusion: Annual Report (sponsored by Paul Hastings). It’s hardly the report’s authors’ fault, but there’s not a lot of there there. The findings are the expected “it’s important and we’re terrible at” combo platter of virtue-signaling and inertia which could have been published any time in the last 25 years. Forget it, Jake, it’s Biglaw.
Even though they aren’t juxtaposed in the report, the symmetry between two of the stats cited together tell a story:
- Six out of 10 corporate attorneys with outside counsel feel the overall
diversity of their outside counsel is important. - The majority of corporate attorneys with outside counsel do not know whether
or not their outside counsel has diversity and inclusion strategies in place (59
percent).
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So, yay, a majority “cares.” But not enough to know or ask.
P.S. By the way, if you’re interested in the cold hard numbers regarding gender diversity in the legal profession, do check out our Law Firm Gender Diversity Index.
Brian Dalton is the director of research for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with any questions or comments.